Nothing Outside the State
By Robert Higgs • Tuesday March 16, 2010 8:14 PM PDT • 53 Comments
A popular slogan of the Italian Fascists under Mussolini was, “Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato” (everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state). I recall this expression frequently as I observe the state’s far-reaching penetration of my own society.
What of any consequence remains beyond the state’s reach in the United States today? Not wages, working conditions, or labor-management relations; not health care; not money, banking, or financial services; not personal privacy; not transportation or communication; not education or scientific research; not farming or food supply; not nutrition or food quality; not marriage or divorce; not child care; not provision for retirement; not recreation; not insurance of any kind; not smoking or drinking; not gambling; not political campaign funding or publicity; not real estate development, house construction, or housing finance; not international travel, trade, or finance; not a thousand other areas and aspects of social life.
One might affirm that the state still keeps its hands off religion, but it actually does not. It certifies certain religious organizations as legitimate and condemns others, as many young men discovered to their sorrow when they attempted to claim the status of conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. It assigns members of certain religions, but not members of others, as chaplains in its armed services.
Besides, isn’t statism itself a religion for most Americans? Do they not honor the state above all else, above even the commandments of a conventional religion they may embrace? If their religion tells them “thou shalt not murder,” but the state orders them to murder, then they murder. If the state tells them to rob, to destroy property, and to imprison innocent people, then, notwithstanding any religious strictures, they rob, destroy property, and imprison innocent people, as millions of victims of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and millions of victims of the so-called Drug War in this country will attest. Moreover, in every form of adversity, Americans look to the state for their personal salvation, just as before the twentieth century their ancestors looked to Divine Providence.
When the state produces unworkable or unsatisfactory conditions in any area of life, and therefore elicits complaints and protests, as it has for example in every area related to health care, it responds to these complaints and protests by making “reforms” that heap new laws, regulations, and government bureaus atop the existing mountain of counterproductive interventions. Thus, each new “reform” makes the government more monstrous and destructive than it was before. Citizen, be careful what you wish for; the government just might give it to you good and hard.
The areas of life that remain outside the government’s participation, taxation, subsidization, regulation, surveillance, and other intrusion or control have become so few and so trivial that they scarcely merit mention. We verge ever closer upon the condition in which everything that is not prohibited is required. Yet, the average American will declare loudly that he is a free man and that his country is the freest in the world. Thus, in a country where more and more is for the state, where virtually nothing is outside the State, and where, aside from pointless complaints, nothing against the State is permitted, Americans have become ideal fascist citizens. Like the average German during the years that Hitler ruled Germany, most Americans today, inhabiting one of the most pervasively controlled countries in the history of the world, think they are free.
Tags: Civil Society, Economics, Fascism, Germany, Law, Liberty, Personal Liberty, Politics, Property Rights, Regulation, Surveillance, The State, War 
Dear Dr. Higgs
This heart-felt appraisal of the American condition was beautiful. However true that may be, one can only judge societies on a relative basis. And on that note, Americans are indeed freer than most other peoples on this earth. That is, indeed, a sorry state of affairs. But look towards Europe or Asia or Africa or the Middle East.
Where are the exceptions? Hong Kong, perhaps...Switzerland maybe, Taiwan, Australia and Canada are comparable I suppose.
Where else?
I’m not as pessimistic as you, however. Progressives have run out of persuasive arguments. And the neocons who are also a branch of progressives have shown their failures. Progressivism today is a sorry mish-mash of old-world leftist arguments (“CEO makes X, why do workers make X-Y?”) to post-modern inchoate and contradictory love of ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ with embrace of nebulous concepts like ‘hate crimes’ and ‘hate speech’
Progressivism is at a dead end.
Of course from your extensive, well-documented, depressing histories, we can see that no matter what transpired, the New Deal state has only grown without pause with variation only in the degree of the ratchet effect.
Oh well
Contemplationist | Mar 16, 2010 | Reply
Truer words were never written. Both government and religion are dependent upon the ignorance, gullability, and infantilism of the masses.
richard | Mar 17, 2010 | Reply
Mr. Higgs, I once thought of you as a pessimist. But the more I listen to your lectures, the more I read Austrian Economics, and the more I read your blogs I become ever more convinced that you are a REALIST. The same applies to the rest of your associates who refuse to compromise on Liberty for the sake of “relativism”.
Just recently I was invited for a job interview for a temp agency. Mind you, at the time my drivers license was set to be renewed in a week or so, and for the meantime I’m stuck with my expired card and a copy of a temporary permit. Nevertheless, I was informed that, by law, this form of ID is unnacceptable for purposes of reporting my income through the business. In other words, the State forbids them to hire people without the right documents, and I can’t work without the State’s permission.
By how much are we as a country “freer” than others if we can’t do business with our neighbors without the State breathing down our necks? I doubt it’s much at all.
DW | Mar 17, 2010 | Reply
Truly superb article. Inspiring.
Fingolfin | Mar 17, 2010 | Reply
Thank you, Bob.
And your link (from “German,” above) to “They Thought They Were Free” is extraordinarily powerful as well.
Best wishes,
Mary
Mary Theroux | Mar 17, 2010 | Reply
What a load of rot. Your country is about as fascistic as my left-foot. You have no armed militias in the street, no limitations on what you can say, no-one supporting a syndicalist POV.
Ray McIntyre | Mar 18, 2010 | Reply
Great article, but you are a bit off when it comes to the State and religion. All the Constitution says it that the Federal Government cannot make one specific religion or better yet a denomination the “official” religion of the states. That is not the same thing as the Military using primarily Catholic/Judeo-Christian religious leaders, that has more to do with demographics. The Military is actually forced to recognize and allow for worship of all religions. That is actually where the Government has stuck it’s nose in where it doesn’t belong.
James Cochran | Mar 18, 2010 | Reply
Dear Mary,
Thanks for your comment. I urge everyone to read the excerpt from Mayer’s book — better, to read the entire book. I cannot imagine how anyone can read that account of how totalitarianism took hold and persisted for more than a decade in Germany without feeling an eerie similarity with the way in which events and popular reactions have unfolded in this country. To say that I find this similarity unsettling does not even begin to indicate how dreadful I find it to be.
Robert Higgs | Mar 18, 2010 | Reply
Dr. Higgs
I read the excerpt and I’ve ordered the book.
This morning my wife and I were discussing downward spiral of America’s contemporary culture and political scene. She’s been talking about these things for some time and I’ve been skeptical. She’s no conspiracy theorist. She’s Swiss, not given to knee jerk reactions. But, she looks at the world through her little prism here in the Kansas Flint Hills and finds what she sees very troubling. Perhaps it’s her analytical mind (Masters in Finance/Business.
I’ve been a more trusting, hopeful soul, the by-product of a theological education. I’ve taken the naive approach, as the song goes, and believed that “our government must be strong, always right and never wrong.”
It seems the older I get, though, the more my trust and naivite’ are evaporating.
I sat in on a conference call last night, conducted by Jerry Moran, our district congressional rep. here in Kansas. I was absolutely stunned. I can’t think of one person who didn’t feel that government’s job was to meet their “needs” and crush their enemies Many of those not favorably disposed to the health care bill that will be voted on this Sunday have developed a sense that they would be willing to trade individual freedom for the false security of government care.
I wrote to Mr. Moran this morning about the story C.S. Lewis once told about an Irishman (The Abolition of Man, I think) who bought a stove based on the promise that it would cut his fuel bills in half. He bought two, assuming that in so doing he would forever eliminate his fuel bills. Lewis called it the magician’s bargain. I’m beginning to think that’s what government is offering us now and what many are swallowing hook, line and sinker.
It makes me wonder what need is going to be filled next and what we’re going to have to give up to get it. Food and clothing for our souls maybe?
Keep up the good work. I’m read and listening.
Phil Dillon
Emporia, Kansas
Phil Dillon | Mar 18, 2010 | Reply
Hello Dr. Higgs,
I hope this comment finds you well and prospering.
I just finished reading your “take no prisoners” article, then returning to the second paragraph... The second paragraph should, as it did me, as the Mighty Mogambo Guru would say, “Shake the crapola out of a sane individual!” The second paragraph is the very reason I parted company with America more than 31-years ago, as you already know. I’ve done nothing in life that I can think of ... nothing more important, than getting out, leaving! Everything else falls into place. Freedom, liberty, privacy, both financial and personal, as well as private property rights do not exist and probably never will in the America you know. What a shame. America represents a lamentable experiment gone to the rabid dogs and paragraph two sums it up with precision.
I can’t think of anything of greater persuasion than paragraph number two in your article that should cause an individual to flee for his or her life from the onslaught of a raging, bloodthirsty bull that the United States government is and has become ... except to live in denial. To live the only life s/he will ever have in the emunctory channel of the American government is mind-boggling ... and paragraph two says it all to boot.
Again, my very best to you Robert.
C’est la guerre,
Capt. A.
Principaute de Monaco
GMT +1:00 CET
“Anyone who needs to be persuaded to be free, doesn’t deserve to be.” ~ L. Neil Smith
Capt. A. | Mar 18, 2010 | Reply
Ray,
You haven’t spent much time in US airports, have you? Try exercising “free speech” in an airport and see if you make your connecting flight.
mikehell | Mar 18, 2010 | Reply
Perhaps YouTube is not available to you. If it were you surely would have viewed some of the pervasive videos filmed by citizens, of para-military police and SWAT teams assaulting peaceful people who had assumed, like you, that Americans still enjoyed free speech and other old-fashioned civil rights.
d.reed | Mar 23, 2010 | Reply
An analyst I follow wrote that the credit extended by the central banks is what enables the socialist states to survive. If that analysis is accurate, (and the analyst does have a great track record of predicting what will happen), then I can hardly wait for the developing depression to wipe out practically all credit, and wipe out the ability of the socialist states to survive. Unfortunately, it sucks that millions of good people will also get hurt in the process. But I think we can live with paying cash at time of sale for everything (especially at prices a couple orders of magnitude lower).
Robert | Mar 24, 2010 | Reply
Hey Ray,
Fascism doesn’t require jack-boots and thug beat-downs to be Fascism. In fact, the brand of
Fascism we have in America wears a smiley face, spouts politically correct platitudes. It contains every other necessary element of Fascism—such as an ever-increasing merger of corporate and government power, media and societal “thought police” that preach “tolerance” and “diversity”, but have no tolerance OF diversity when it comes to viewpoint and expression!
John | Mar 27, 2010 | Reply
Dr. Higgs
Thanks for the recommendation. I finished Milton Mayer’s book yesterday.
I found some of the same strains in Elie Wiesel’s “All Rivers Run to the Sea.” One of the characters Wiesel weaves through his narrative is Moshe the Beadle (Moshe the storyteller or Moshe the Madman). Wiesel remembers that no one would believe Moshe when he told the people of the Sighet about the things he saw happening. They refused to believe the Germans were capable of doing such terrible things. They saw them as the people of Goethe, Schiller, Bismarck, and Metternich.
Mayer’s work adds the haunting question asked over and over by those who lived, and often thrived, in the madness – “What would you do?”
It’s a very potent question.
I think we Americans believe ourselves to be immune from despotism. After reading Mayer I suspect we are ripe. It may not be the despotism of a charismatic individual. It may just be despotism by committee.
This leads me to the questiuon. What, if anything, can be done to reverse the course we are now on?
Phil Dillon
Emporia, Kansas
Phil Dillon | Apr 13, 2010 | Reply
You are so right about Americans believing they are free even as the government takes more and more of their rights away little by little. The perfect example is the 2nd Amendment. People will quote it, thinking they still have the right to “keep and bear arms.” The truth is that the average person has very few of those rights left. Only the holder of a Federal Firearms License or FFL actually retains some of those rights once granted to all Americans. I encourage anyone who owns guns to check into getting an FFL, even if it’s just as a collector, and hold on to those 2nd Amendment rights while they still can.
Mckenna Delaney | Jul 24, 2010 | Reply
Robert has a good point here and I absolutely agree on it.
Thomas from Wealth BUilding Course | Jul 24, 2010 | Reply
Right on Robert. It’s hard to imagine but the state’s reach is growing pretty much daily and into areas never imagined before by most people. I personally have had two businesses put out of business by laws (one state and one federal) to “protect” the consumer. Neither law did such. They actually ended up limiting consumer’s choices. I must quote a classic here. “We’re from the government. Were here to help you.”
Ron Stone | Jul 26, 2010 | Reply
Wow, if you think you’re in a free country you’ve really got your head in the sand, if it’s so free then whats up with high taxes? yeah that’s right!
corn stoves | Jul 29, 2010 | Reply
As an educator for the chiropractic field – a profession struggling with on-going changing legislation – I found your post interesting and provocative. Great perspective. Thanks for sharing.
Chiropractic Marketing Coach | Aug 4, 2010 | Reply
I live in Canada and am extremely worried about the fact that we can’t get people out to vote when we get a chance to make a difference. On the other hand, in general, does the man in the street inform himself enough to make an intelligent decision.
Alma's Hydroponic System | Aug 4, 2010 | Reply
That is a great link thanks for sharing it.
Jim at home in Phoenix | Aug 17, 2010 | Reply
I would have to say no the man in the street is not usually informed enough to make a good decision.
joe at home in Seattle | Aug 17, 2010 | Reply
Much of this comes from the small innocuous “commerce clause” in the Constitution, that’s been judicially interpreted to mean that the Federal Government can get their hands into just about anything!
Andrew Cort | Aug 21, 2010 | Reply
As an Immigrant, I would like to quote an old wise man: “You do not know, appreciate, feel and enjoy what you have until you loose it”. Please think a minute about the quote!
Hesus1225 | Aug 25, 2010 | Reply
I am involved with the chiropractic profession and I must say that our profession struggles with on-going legislation constantly...interesting post.
Chris W. Burfield | Sep 7, 2010 | Reply
Robert has a good point here and I absolutely agree on it also. So much for the FREE state! I am in the Real Estate profession and we are hurting from all the intrusion.
Phil Kretchmar | Sep 11, 2010 | Reply
What is the alternative, maybe 50 states with thousands of laws which are all different, maybe that’s what we have to do, have all the states have laws that affect all of us and they are all different,,,,great thinking folks!
Hesus Mourillon | Sep 20, 2010 | Reply
I think you are a patriotic person. Its true if a person thinks only about his state where he lives and fights for the development of his ownland,then the state can really perform well. Nice idea but i don’t know how many live for their states.
Collin paul
HowMuchHomeCanIAfford.org | Sep 23, 2010 | Reply
But how do we get our freedom back—before we become like Germany in the 30′s?
stan | Oct 15, 2010 | Reply
Well said. The truth is that the country recognized around the world as being the first democratic one, the country from where democracy came to the rest of the planet, is becoming more and more anti-democratic. Sometimes it actually seems like the USA has become a country where everyone is afraid. Afraid to not say something that might offend the authorities.
George the blackjack teacher | Oct 17, 2010 | Reply
The topic of the article is a philosophical and legal justification for the crucial liberal distinction between the right and the good within the framework of an over-arching modern liberal theory of universal justice. This will contain a revised concept of lib-erty – without referring to collectivist ideas on the one hand and a biased “economic-centered” concept of liberty on the other.
Costas Tryfonos | Oct 18, 2010 | Reply
It assigns members of certain religions, but not members of others, as chaplains in its armed services.
James Morgan - Puritan Financial Advisor | Oct 26, 2010 | Reply
Dear Robert, I agree with your article. But the same situation happens not only in the U.S. but in general the system tries to apply it to all the countries including mine here in Athens Greece. We want to say that we are free too but what we finally are we know it and feel it in our hearts even though the try to make us stop thinking and feeling. keep it up my friend.
Christos The supplement Guy | Oct 27, 2010 | Reply
Most countries in the western world are a lot free’er than USA. Go out and see for yourself.
Olsen | Oct 30, 2011 | Reply