Chapter 18

Economic, Political, and Societal Collapse

Supplemental Reading

Click on the Book Web Links button on the homepage to access the webpages pertinent to this chapter.

18-1. Special Note to Readers: If you have a strong sense that the American way of life is ending, but you do not understand why, this chapter will provide you with the answer. Here you will learn exactly how we arrived at this dangerous, American society-destroying juncture in our history. You do not have to read this chapter to learn details about prepping. However, you must absorb the information if you are to recognize the signs of the coming economic collapse and the political, social, and economic factors to avoid after the die-off and during reconstruction of New America.

18-2. Just the Facts Ma’am: As Sergeant Joe Friday (actor Jack Webb) always said on the TV program Dragnet when investigating a crime and the lady being interviewed began to drift off the subject or into personal opinion, “Just the facts, ma’am; just the facts.” Hence, I have made every attempt to stick to the facts and use them to support logical conclusions. Those places where I inserted my opinion are obvious or I have stated such.

18-3. Fact Checkers Needed: To those readers with a different political opinion, that is quite okay. All I ask is that you remain objective and note the facts as I present them. If you find errors in this chapter’s stated facts, please send me the quote and a statement of the facts with references. Once verified, I will include your corrections in the website Book Web Links and Book Updates and the next edition of this study guide. I appreciate your input, which you can provide by clicking on CONTACT THE AUTHOR in the main menu on the homepage as previously mentioned.

18-4. Purpose: This chapter analyzes the political history and social conditions that produced the Progressive Movement and how it has brought the U.S. economy to the brink of disaster by displacing America’s original capitalist-based economy with one that is fascist-based with socialist elements. Here you discover how the executive branch of government, i.e., the presidency, has taken power from the people and evolved into a semi-monarchical power; how the U.S. has converted from a capitalist to a fascist-socialist economic system; and why this situation will never change without a complete societal collapse into a state of absolute anarchy and the resultant die-off. It is too bad that 80-90 percent of the U.S. population has to die in order to return to our original roots.

18-5. Factors to Understanding: To acquire thorough, unambiguous insight into the conditions and events that brought about our current disastrous economic condition is not a simple straightforward process. There are a number of contributing factors and each by itself only offers a glimpse into a portion of the complete picture. Familiarize yourself with each to appreciate fully how we arrived at our current unstable economic state and the inevitability of its collapse.

As we discuss the individual factors, commit to researching and studying them so that they become imbedded in your memory and are easily brought to your consciousness. As a prepper, you have the best chance of being among those that survive the die-off. You will be sorely needed to serve as a guide to prevent a reoccurrence of these conditions and give New America a chance to regain its great-nation status.

18-6. Fundamental Economic Systems: Economic insight begins with becoming familiar with the straightforward, clear-cut definitions of the three fundamental economic systems: capitalism, socialism, and fascism. A lack of understanding of these terms leaves preppers uninformed and unable to defend capitalism and a self-reliance creed.

We cannot possibly engage in serious analysis of the potential for an economic and societal collapse without first defining these three principal economic systems. Knowing their meanings and understanding their differences and associations helps to gain insight into the social and political discussions that follow and eliminates confusion between innocuous economic terms and emotionally charged political terms. While learned economists argue in infinitesimal detail about these definitions, we will employ the practical KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principal to define each of them.

a. Conflation and Emotional Response: Beware of those that argue the positive or negative results of an economic system instead of the definitions. Many people conflate the innocuous definitions with the real or perceived negative and positive social connotations associated with the results where they have existed. For example, Hitler and Mussolini’s use of fascism in its extreme form during the last century resulted in horrific acts wrought upon the people subjected to it. However, the definition of fascism is itself harmless.

The terms socialism, socialist, fascism, and fascist carry profound emotional connotations for some, because they relate to the human tragedies associated with extreme socialist and fascist governments—USSR, Venezuela, and Cuba, to name a few—and their failed economic systems. For many, these terms bring to mind Hitler, Mussolini, Castro, and Stalin, and the brutal manner in which they conducted WWII and the Cold War. When you use these terms, be cognizant of the fact that you must ignore emotional reaction if you are to gain insight into the technical terminology, especially as it applies to twenty-first century economic systems.

b. Capitalism: Capitalism is an economic philosophy based on private ownership of production, distribution, and exchange of goods and services. It allows individuals and groups of individuals to accumulate wealth and set the prices of goods and services centered on the concept of supply and demand, or the price that the seller is willing to accept and the purchaser is willing to pay for goods and services. Emphasis is on generating new business and expanding existing business, thereby growing the economy and generating job opportunities for other citizens. Other terms for capitalist-based economies are free enterprise, private enterprise, free market, and laissez-faire or hands-off capitalism. Prime examples of societies with capitalist-based economies are Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore.

Note: In the agreement to return sovereignty of Hong Kong to China, China consented to permit Hong Kong to remain capitalist for 50 years.

c. Socialism: Socialism is a political and economic philosophy that promotes government ownership of production, distribution, and exchange of all goods and services. The ruling class demands that citizens accept the state as the highest authority and from where they derive their rights. Under a socialism-based economic system, the government owns all means of production, distribution, and exchange of goods and services, and all workers are employees of the state.

Socialism does not permit citizens to own property, acquire wealth, or engage in commercial enterprise. Emphasis is on the distribution of wealth as seen fit by those in control of the government. Simplistically expressed, under socialism, the government owns everything and every worker is a government employee. All citizens live in government housing, purchase goods and services from government-owned stores, gain information from government news outlets, share information with fellow citizens over government voice and data telecommunications networks, and ride in government-provided transportation.

The term Socialism includes Communism, Marxism, and Leninism. While there may be some technical differences that learned economists would argue, they all promote state or collective ownership of property, agriculture, industrial facilities, communications systems, news and entertainment media, and transportation systems. None condones private ownership of property or free enterprise. To maintain power, socialist leaders employ brute violence to impose their theoretically classless, utopian way of life. Prime examples of socialism-based economies include Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, China, and the old Soviet Union.

Note: Freedom of religion threatens any socialist government’s tyrannical rule. Since Jews and Christians only accept God as the ultimate authority, the ultimate granter of human rights, socialist ruling classes either heavily restrict citizens’ rights to religious freedom or forbid it altogether.

d. Fascism: Fascism is a political and economic philosophy that promotes absolute control of commercial enterprise through government regulation and oversight. Under a fascism-based economy, business ownership remains primarily in private hands but is controlled by an autocratic government. Citizens may own businesses but have to manage them in accordance with government regulations.

The fascist system emphasizes advancing the state’s status—and, in reality, the status of whoever has control over the state. Fascist governments do not allow dissent. Benito Mussolini designed fascism, and he and Hitler employed it during WWII to support the Axis war efforts. They commanded industries to produce specific items, determined the prices they could charge for their goods and services, and relocated workers involuntarily to wherever they saw fit.

America began as an almost pure capitalist society, but has shifted into a fascist economy, with some elements of socialism, and supported by what is left of the capitalist elements. Every time the federal government forces private enterprise to conform to any law or regulation, the American economic system becomes more fascism-based and less capitalism-based. The dictatorial component of fascism in America is much less than the degree to which Hitler and Mussolini employed it. Nonetheless, American economics has increasingly advanced toward a fascist system since implementation of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1895. The most obvious example of fascism in this country is Obamacare.

We have an authoritarian executive branch of government forcing a large portion of our free enterprise medical services and product-producing entities—commercial businesses that provide healthcare to their employees, health insurance companies, doctors, nurses, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, and others—to operate only within the limits of the Affordable Care Act and under executive branch regulations. That, my prepper friends, is fascism, which unfortunately was approved by the Supreme Court. Thank you Chief Justice John Roberts.

e. Pure Economic Societies: Obviously, there are no pure capitalist, socialist, or fascist economic societies, although Venezuela and North Korea’s economies come close to pure socialism. In every society, a variable economic scale is imbedded somewhere between the purely capitalist system and the purely socialist system. Even intensely socialist societies possess factors of capitalism to varying degrees. For example, if a North Korean farmer exchanges a bag of rice with a village neighbor for currency, goods, or services, they both—legal or not in their country—are engaging in capitalism.

In a society with a capitalist-based economy, there are also factors of socialism. Our own executive branch of government owns and operates Veterans Administration hospitals, the nation’s passenger rail system (Amtrak), and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to name a few. They are all operated by government employees, and that is socialism. 

18-7. Economic Systems and Political Terms Associations: It is necessary to understand certain political and economic terms that enable us to analyze the economic factors that prove unambiguously the inevitability of the coming economic collapse. Once you are familiar with the political and economic terms, the analysis that follows will be easier to comprehend, allowing us to move forward with a rational examination and arrive at a conclusion that is not muddled by emotional distractions. We want to stick to the facts.

a. Political and Economic Philosophies:

1. The Political ISMs:

• Conservatism: Conservatism is a political and economic philosophy that promotes retaining our social structure as outlined in the U.S. Constitution. It promulgates the intention of those who originated it and outlined a philosophy that political change in our country is to be accomplished through the constitutional amendment process, not laws that provide regulatory power to the executive branch.
• Fascism: Fascism is a political and economic philosophy that promotes private ownership of property but under the strict control of the central government.
• Liberalism: Liberalism is a political and economic philosophy that promotes social change through government regulation, i.e., fascism and socialism to varying degrees, and is synonymous with Progressivism.
• Progressivism: Progressivism is synonymous with socialism and liberalism and is a political and economic philosophy that promotes social change through government regulation at the hands of the executive branch.

2. Political Labels: Citizens with opinions on how America’s economic system should be structured usually label themselves, or are labeled by others, as follows:

•  Conservative: A conservative subscribes to the concept that government actions must be confined to the letter of the Constitution as written. Government actions are not at the whims of bureaucrats in the various departments and agencies of the executive branch of government. A conservative believes that local communities and state government, not the federal government, best address social issues. A conservative believes that constitutional amendments are the only authorized means of change to government control over the citizens. Conservatives do not consider the U.S. Constitution flexible or adaptable, except through the amendment process.
•  Fascist: A fascist believes that government should have complete control of commercial enterprise, not to own it but to control how business is conducted and taxed. Fascists believe that taxes should be extremely high on the wealthy, the producers, and that revenue derived from the wealthy should be redistributed to those who produce less or do not produce at all.

Note: Many reject and misuse the term fascist because of the strong stigma associated with the Nazis of WWII, which causes them to refer to themselves incorrectly as socialist or progressive.

• Socialist: A socialist believes the government is better at production, distribution, and exchange of all goods and services than commercial enterprise, and there is something wrong with individuals or corporations making a profit. To a socialist, generating profit is an evil act. They believe that wealth accumulated by some citizens is at the loss of other citizens and therefore should not be allow. A socialist believes that everyone should share equally in the creation of all wealth regardless of the time, effort, personal sacrifice, and risk taken on the part of any citizen. A socialist also believes that social issues are best addressed at the central government level, not by the citizens themselves at state and local government levels.

To reiterate: Fascists believe that commercial enterprise should remain in private hands and socialists believe that private ownership of business should not be permitted. Their common goal, however, is the redistribution of wealth.

•  Liberal: A liberal advocates a large central government that enforces laws and regulations over private enterprise, individuals, and groups of individuals to produce equality and redistribution of wealth, even if the actions are not in accord with the letter of the Constitution or the majority of the citizens. Liberals consider the U.S. Constitution to be flexible and adaptable to current culture without the need for constitutional amendments to achieve social change. They believe that change through the federal court system or laws that have doubtful constitutional basis are legitimate means for achieving their social goals.

At the end of the Twentieth Century and the beginning of the Twenty-first Century, most liberals recoiled and rejected the term liberal as applicable to them. They often preferred to be called progressive because the term does not generally carry the same negative fascist or socialist connotation as the term liberal. The term progressive sounds so much better. People normally resist change, but who is against progress? Progressives believe the term makes them appear more broad-minded, forward-looking, tolerant, above the old ways, and superior to conservatives.

• Progressive: In today’s America, there are no differences between those who profess to be liberal, progressive, or socialist. Although, many that claim to be socialist are actually fascist. For example, Bernie Sanders, the self-proclaimed socialist, campaigns—as this is being written—on a plan to tax and regulate big business and the Wall Street rich but does not campaign for government takeover of commercial enterprises. Technically, that makes him a fascist, not a socialist.
• Independent: An independent purports to be unassociated with any political party. There are two elementary economic and political points of view, each associated with one of the two major American political parties. Some believe the federal government is better able to solve our economic and social problems—the Democratic Party view—and others believe the citizens are better able to solve economic and social problems at the local and state level—the Republican Party view. Those who claim to be neither Democrat nor Republican have not delved deep enough into the issues to determine which philosophy they truly support, leaving them to oscillate between parties during election cycles, very likely voting on emotions instead of logical analysis of the issues. Independents often have a certain self-satisfying smugness that belies their ignorance.

3. Political Spectrum Labels:

• Left Wing: Also referred to as the left or political left, this label describes the political philosophy of communism, socialism, fascism, and systems from which the rights of the individual are determined by government leaders and personal freedoms are subordinate to the will of the government. Those who subscribe to left-wing politics are referred to as leftist. Extreme left-wing ideology is always imposed, never freely accepted, and has never shown a history of success anywhere that it has been enforced. Progressives, socialists, and liberals subscribe to the left-wing political philosophy, most not understanding the implications should they prevail.
• Right Wing: Also referred to as the right or political right, this label describes the political philosophy of capitalism and strict constitutional republicanism. It supports limited government intrusion into individual lives, state government constitutional rights, and commercial enterprise activities. Conservatives subscribe to the right-wing political philosophy.
• Middle of the Road: This label describes the political philosophy of those who subscribe to a position between left wing and right wing, often unsure of which way to lean under different given issues, whether to allow more government intrusion or exclusion.

b. Political and Economic Philosophical Relationships Summary: This is a down-and-dirty look at the relationship between the terms described in Section a. above.

1. Progressives, liberals, socialists, fascists, and those who otherwise lean left generally associate themselves with the Democratic Party.

2. Conservatives and capitalists generally associate themselves with the Republican Party.

3. The Democratic Party of today is associated with left wing and progressive, liberal, socialist, and fascist terms. It supports government intervention into individual citizen’s lives, providing for the individual from the time they are born until they die. Example: The Obama 2012 Reelection Campaign actually created a slide show, “The Life of Julia,” which depicts how the government takes care of a woman from cradle to grave, eliminating all need for self-reliance or a man in her life.

It is not likely that many Democrats will remain standing after the die-off.

4. The Republican Party is generally described as a right-wing organization that supports limited government intervention into individual citizen’s lives, relying on self-sufficiency for those capable of supporting themselves. Republicans realize that it is impossible to have a society where all individuals are economically equal.

Since about the beginning of the LBJ Administration, in the mid-1960s, many Republican Party politicians moved left in order to avoid politically correct labels pushed by the Progressive Movement’s propaganda machine. Their more conservative constituents refer to them as RINOs, or Republican In Name Only. Conservatives disdained RINOs for their lack of intestinal fortitude in addressing the capitalist point of view.

5. Conservatives associate themselves with the Republican Party and the unofficial Tea Party.

6. Independents are not sure where they belong. Some lean left, some lean right, and the rest bounce between the liberal and conservative points of view. It makes them feel good to state that they are not beholden to either party. They vote with Democrats when their emotions cause them to feel good about the Democratic candidates, then vote with Republicans when they become tired of the Democrats lying to them and screwing them over. Independents are the primary cause of wide swings in political opinion polls and elections.

18-8. Deficit and the National Debt: The difference between the annual deficit and the national debt are often misunderstood. This section will help clarify any confusion.

a. Federal Funding: First a general explanation: The federal government obtains money through taxing people and business and borrowing from various sources. If the taxes are insufficient to pay the bills, then the government has no choice but to borrow money to make up the shortfall. The shortfall for any given year is called the deficit. Each year’s deficit is added to all of the deficits that have been stacking up from all the previous years to what we call the national debt. Do not leave this section until you fully understand the difference.

b. Deficit: The deficit is the difference between the amount of money the government takes in from taxes and other revenues and the amount of money the government spends during a budget year, which runs from October of one year through September of the next year. To keep the government, i.e., the executive branch of government, operating, the executive branch must either cut expenses or borrow money. Since executive branch costs only go up, never down, and the taxes collected are never enough to pay for executive branch spending, the executive branch ends up borrowing money each year to cover the deficit. The Treasury Department is responsible for borrowing money and calculates the total deficit on an annual basis.

Note: The judicial and legislative branches of government also increase their spending each year. However, the amount of taxpayer dollars expended on those two branches of government is miniscule compared to executive branch spending.

c.  National Debt: The national debt is the total accumulation of all of the annual deficits. For example, the amount of money the executive branch borrowed in 2015—the 2015 deficit—is added to the accumulation of all of the national debt since George Washington was president. Every year, as far as the eye can see, the national debt has increased through the accumulation of more annual deficit spending.

What does that mean to the average American? On December 4, 2014, the national debt became greater than $18,000,000,000,000. According to the website http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock, as of February 24, 2015, the estimated population of the U.S. was 320,072,107. That means the estimated share of the national debt for each citizen—man, woman, or child—at that time was over $56,600, including babies born on that day. For a family of four that is about $226,400. Since only half of our citizens pay income taxes, if an effort was undertaken to pay off the debt, each of the four-member-paying families would have to fork over more than $452,800 each. (These figures will be much higher by the time you read this.)

d. Outlook Through 2024: Here’s the bad news: According to the February 2014 Congressional Budget Office, The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2014 to 2024, Chapter 1, Page 2 Table 1-1, the total of the estimated added deficits between 2014 and 2024 are projected to be $7,904,000,000,000. According to the Brillig.com National Debt Clock, the national debt at the time of this writing in December 2015 is more than $18,802,000,000,000. Apply the added estimates for the years 2016 through 2023, minus the estimates for 2014 of 992,000,000,000 gives us an estimated total national debt of $25,714,000,000,000 (twenty-five trillion, seven hundred and fourteen billion dollars) in 2024.

e. Long-Term Outlook: Here’s the really bad news: According to the Congressional Budget Office Publication 50250, The 2015 Long-Term Budget Outlook, if nothing changes, 25 years from now the federal debt will be more than everything America produces. That is, every penny’s worth of everything we produce will not be enough to pay the debt. What do you think the potential is for us to reach that point ever without a collapse that leads to a state of absolute anarchy? Here is the quote from The 2015 Long-Term Budget Outlook:

If current law remained generally unchanged in the future, federal debt held by the public would decline slightly relative to GDP over the next few years, the Congressional Budget Office projects. After that, however, growing budget deficits—caused mainly by the aging of the population and rising health care costs—would push debt back to, and then above, its current high level. The deficit would grow from less than 3 percent of GDP this year to more than 6 percent in 2040. At that point, 25 years from now, federal debt held by the public would exceed 100 percent of GDP. Moreover, debt would still be on an upward path relative to the size of the economy. Consequently, the policy changes needed to reduce debt to any given amount would become larger and larger over time. The rising debt could not be sustained indefinitely; the government’s creditors would eventually begin to doubt its ability to cut spending or raise revenues by enough to pay its debt obligations, forcing the government to pay much higher interest rates to borrow money.

If this makes your head want to explode, don’t worry, the collapse will occur well before we reach the point of public debt exceeding 100 percent of GDP. Keep reading…and prepping.

f. The Bottom Line: If you are having trouble following this, all you have to know is that in 2024 each American citizen will owe about $80,000, meaning a family of four will owe $320,000, and it is not possible that we can reach 2040 without a complete economic collapse. The question is not if the government will go bankrupt and/or the economy collapse before then, but at which point do creditors cut us off and cause the economy to collapse? Stretch this out a few more years and you can see that the America we have known is doomed. Logical analysis tells us that it is impossible to have any other outcome. Our children and grandchildren and their descendants will likely have a miserable existence.

g. Why? These astronomical numbers and dire outlook are the result of unfunded entitlements—meaning enough taxes are not available to pay them—and an excessively large, out-of-control executive branch of government, albeit provided at the hands of Congress over many years. Those on the left will blame it on military spending. Do not allow yourself to fall for that lie.

Moreover, be careful of accepting figures from Obama’s Executive Branch on military spending; you will not find it on the White House website pages meant for public information. That site uses the term National Defense Spending in their budget information to the public, which includes nonmilitary spending on such items as foreign military aid, foreign economic aid, veterans, and other items not related to actual spending directly on the military itself.

h. The Crutch: Since it is obvious that Congress and the executive branch will not reverse the spending trends and are taking our nation to ruin, why has the executive branch not already gone bankrupt? Simple: the Federal Reserve System maintains a continuous flow of funny digital money to mask the problem.

i. The Result: What will happen when the executive branch cannot continue to support the inner-city welfare state? What will happen when EBT cards can no longer be recharged, free housing becomes unavailable, and the many other freebies that half of our citizens are accustomed to receiving to support their lifestyles without having to work for it dry up?

These questions go to the heart of this chapter. If farmers do not receive subsidies to grow crops, we can expect that they will not riot, loot, and burn towns. We can expect, however, that when inner-city dwellers’ EBT cards in particular become useless rioting and looting will ensue. Are you starting to get the picture?

Note: Domestic lending includes intergovernmental funds transfers. The Social Security Trust Fund is bankrupt from lending to other executive branch agencies. Sadly, retirees cannot expect the Social Security System to provide support much longer. Instead of remaining a retirement supplement program as originally intended, it will likely morph into just another welfare program, assuming the collapse does not occur before then.

18-9. The Progressive Movement: Toward the end of the Nineteenth Century and without government intrusion, capitalism rapidly allowed America to become an industrialized giant. Capitalism is the major feature allowed by the U.S. Constitution that made America Great in the first place. Industrialization, however, created some undesirable social problems not previously experienced by the more agrarian social structure under which our nation originated. The main problems included child labor sweatshops, inequitable treatment of minorities, unsafe and unfair work conditions, industrial monopolies, and political corruption.

a. Origination: The Progressive Movement originated in 1890 as a legitimate social movement to bring attention to the labor wrongs and address significant monopolistic business practices. Unfortunately, the Progressive Movement quickly evolved into a political movement with passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act, which gave the executive branch of government broad powers to affect commercial enterprise.

During the American Industrial Revolution, large companies consolidated into several major enterprises—transportation, petroleum, ironworks, steel, and other industries. The strong companies monopolized production and distribution systems. Each gained control over their industries and threatened the capitalist concept of competition. Child labor, unsafe and unhealthy work conditions, poor treatment of employees, and social issues related to restrictions on women and blacks rapidly grew out of that era.

b. Need for Regulatory Authority: The apparent means to remedy those early abuses was through the legislative process, something that seemed reasonable at the time and gave Congress the moral authority to pass many laws giving the executive branch regulatory powers over commercial enterprise. Problems began when the Progressive Movement, with encouragement and political maneuvering from progressive presidents—primarily Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, James (Jimmy) Carter, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, George W Bush, and Barack Obama—continued to generate more laws with ever-increasing regulatory authority provided to the executive branch.

Over time, the Progressive Movement reached epidemic proportions, giving us an out-of-control regulatory monster that today is killing free enterprise and turning America into a fascist nation. In an attempt to correct the problems, an overwhelming regulatory, fascist-leaning system emerged giving the executive branch what is now approaching omnipotence. Currently, our president rules more like a king or dictator than a servant of the American people. Government, not God, now determines our rights.

c. Ongoing Movement: Contrary to reports at the time, the so-called Progressive Era did not end in 1920 with the end of WWI. It may have temporarily slowed, but it continued to grow and today generates new laws and expanding presidential regulatory power. The Progressive Movement, supported by a formidable propaganda machine, is extremely active and powerful today. Unfortunately, even with the good it initially brought over a century ago as a social movement, it has now left us with an uncontrollable, massive, and powerful executive branch of government.

The Progressive Movement, with its initial good intentions of the 1890s, seized the political arena at the beginning of the Twentieth Century and steadily dragged the nation from its capitalist origins into a fascist-socialist economic state we have today. Its success is seen in the fact that the America envisioned and created by the founders, a vision of the people having power over the government, no longer exists.

d. Progressive Presidents: Many books have been written on the progressive presidents discussed in this section. It is not possible to furnish the volumes of information contained in those books. These descriptions, however, provide sufficient detailed information to allow you to determine how the regulatory process got out of hand and who was involved. Without this information, as abbreviated as it is, it is impossible to achieve insight into the inevitability of the coming economic collapse. Presidents not mentioned in the following successions are those that I do not consider progressives.

1. Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt: Vice-President Teddy Roosevelt became the first progressive president in 1901, after the assassination of William McKinley. While Teddy Roosevelt advocated a position in favor of capitalism, he believed the government should control corporate greed. He worked with congress to pass anti-monopolistic (trust-busting) laws that gave him regulatory power over business. This was the beginning of fascism in America, although it was not called fascism—a term later coined by Mussolini—at the time. It is doubtful that Teddy Roosevelt saw it as an over-expansion of the executive branch of government, but rather an expedient means to address the problems of the time in accordance with his personal desires.

Teddy Roosevelt accomplished a number of good things for our country, including building the Panama Canal, establishing national parks, and introducing necessary environmental initiatives. The problem: succeeding congresses and presidents did not stop doing “good things” for the country. Teddy Roosevelt began the rapid realignment of the Democratic Party toward what they called progressivism. Years later, they added the term liberal, but both terms refer to the same political thinking. What is called progressivism and liberalism are not economic systems but political philosophies that have fostered American fascism with elements of American socialism.

2. Woodrow Wilson: Woodrow Wilson continued Teddy Roosevelt’s initiatives, further promoting the progressive agenda. He was not able to push forward some of his ideas because of distractions created by WWI, but he was able to do a lot of damage. Wilson created the Federal Reserve, the Federal Trade Commission, the federal income tax, and the eight-hour workday.

3. Warren Harding: Harding was elected in 1920, just after WWI ended. The postwar demobilization caused widespread unemployment, low wages, and high prices. Americans were weary from the war and Teddy Roosevelt’s idealistic progressivism; they wanted big government to be brought under control and the U.S. to cease foreign interventionism. Harding cut government spending in half and decreased taxes and economic expansion; wages increased, prices decreased, and unemployment dissolved. Tax revenue flowed into the government coffers, almost tripling within five years.

Unfortunately, he was also inclined toward Roosevelt and Wilson’s progressive tendencies. He signed one of the first national welfare programs in the country’s history, the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Act, which provided matching federal funds for medical services to pregnant women and children. Just as today with Obamacare, many argued the law to be unconstitutional, an intrusion into states’ rights. Harding also pushed for federal government intrusion into agriculture, signing laws that exempted farm cooperatives from antitrust efforts, regulating meatpacking, and offering farm credit, which resulted in farmers borrowing money to expand at a time when they were producing more food than the demand for it. To rectify the problem, he supported even more farm regulating laws, a trend that continued into the present day.

4. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR): FDR was a socialist. Fifth cousin to Teddy Roosevelt, he continued the fascist tendencies of his predecessors and implemented his socialist agenda. Americans elected FDR during the Great Depression of the 1930s convinced he would alleviate their woes, and government would save them. In reality, he prolonged their suffering. FDR was very popular because the propaganda machine deceived the public into believing he was doing a great job of helping them, so they continued to reelect him.

While many economists disagree—they always do—the actions FDR took had the effect of suppressing the job creators and extending the Great Depression. He established over 100 government agencies, many without the approval of Congress. The funding needed to run the executive branch absorbed most of the available investment capital, leaving capitalists in the private sector without the means to establish new businesses or expand existing businesses. FDR’s actions were the major factor that kept the economy from rebounding after the stock market crash, not unlike the situation we face today. It was only when the U.S. entered WWII that most of the agencies were eliminated.

FDR generated so many agencies with unique abbreviations they were dubbed Alphabet Soup or Alphabet Agencies. The prime example of FDR’s excessive regulatory power—this one conferred to him by Congress—was The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of 1933. It gave him the power to spend 3.3 billion dollars (about 60 billion in today’s dollars) as he saw fit without congressional oversight. The Supreme Court declared the NIRA unconstitutional in 1935, but he had already spent most of the money. The majority of the agencies he created and the excessive regulations he created remain active today.

5. Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ): LBJ’s War on Poverty through his Great Society program gave the executive branch control over the individual state’s social welfare system and created the state of dependency that has killed self-reliance and personal pride in half of America’s population. We now have multiple generations of Americans that exist almost exclusively on welfare. The cost to sustain it is one of the major elements dragging the economy down.

According to the Heritage Foundation’s report, The War on Poverty After 50 Years, LBJ’s War on Poverty cost over $22,000,000,000,000 (adjusted for inflation and not including Social Security or Medicare). That is triple the combined cost of all of America’s wars since the American Revolution. The report states, “… a significant portion of the population is now less capable of self-sufficiency than it was when the War on Poverty began.”

Note: Do not confuse the unworthy Great Society laws that imposed the nanny state on America with the worthy Great Society laws implemented to eliminate such things as racial segregation and unfair state laws meant to keep minorities from voting.

6. James (Jimmy) Carter: Many people considered Jimmy Carter as the least competent, most failed president in modern times before Barack Obama. President Carter’s major advancements into the socialist and fascist world include creating the Department of Education and Department of Energy and imposing price controls on gasoline during the OPEC oil embargo.

Since then, America’s children are less educated and the Department of Energy, among other things, is in the process of over regulating coal-powered electric plants and mines that provide the coal, driving up energy costs. Because of gas price controls, less gas was available, creating very long lines and short tempers at the gas pump.

7. William (Bill) Clinton: Bill Clinton was less a progressive than were other Democratic presidents. His pivot toward the right started after Hillary Care flopped. During President Clinton’s first term, when Republican Party opponents exposed Hillary Clinton’s healthcare plan as a socialized medicine scheme, the Democratic Party lost both houses of Congress in the midterm election. It was a massacre, and he knew he had to change or die politically. Ironically, the much-maligned Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, saved Clinton politically. Clinton adopted Gingrich’s policies and took credit for the positive results, especially for the upswing in the economy—mostly a residual economic benefit from the Reagan era—and realignment of the welfare state toward workfare with personal responsibility, which dramatically reduced welfare rolls.

8. Barack Obama: Barack Obama drove the final nail in capitalism’s coffin, right next to LBJ’s. His mindset is very similar to that of FDR; he is a socialist and rules as any king would. This would not be possible in America without excessive regulatory authority given by the legislative branch to the executive branch, a vastly ignorant and therefore malleable citizenry, and a powerful propaganda machine, especially in the mainstream media, willing to manipulate those ill-informed citizens.

As we are all aware, President Obama’s greatest “achievements” have been the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (aka Stimulus Act). According to several reports, the Congressional Budget Office has given up trying to determine Obamacare costs due to the excessive—and unconstitutional—changes he has made via fiat. However, a Fox News report on March 4, 2015, estimated the cost will be $1,383,000,000,000 through fiscal year 2025.

The Washington Post estimates the Stimulus Act has cost taxpayers from $1,000,000,000,000 to $1,700,000,000,000 as of the time of this writing in 2015. It has been a disaster. The Stimulus Act wasted an estimated $831,000,000,000 on failed solar power projects and other botched or squandered efforts: turtle crossings in Florida, a guardrail around a nonexistent lake in Oklahoma, preparation of lesbians for adoptive parenthood, a study of duck penises, and other inane items.

Much of the funding for these failed stimulus projects went indirectly to campaign contributors. For example, the major investor of Solyndra, the failed solar energy company, was billionaire George Kaiser, an Obama campaign bundler. A bundler is a person who collects campaign contributions from others and funnels it to the campaign in ways that allow them to avoid personal contribution legal limits. The George Kaiser story is just one of many and has some other sleazy facets, left to the readers’ research, since they are not within the subject of this chapter. This sort of thing has been going on in government ever since the formation of the country, but never at such a destructive scale.

The central guiding philosophy employed by Obama is Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. Following Alinsky’s rules, Obama is able, with the assistance of the propaganda machine, to continue the excesses that will soon bring the economy to collapse.

9. Other Presidents: You may have noticed that President John Kennedy was not included in the list of progressive presidents. That is because he was a conservative president and is defined as a Republican by today’s progressive standards. Except for Herbert Hoover and Ronald Reagan, none of the Republican presidents serving since the beginning of the Progressive Movement attempted to reverse the tide of regulations and overspending. I do not consider most Republican presidents to be progressive-minded, except perhaps Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. Only Herbert Hoover and Ronald Reagan attempted to re-establish capitalism. Herbert Hoover had to contend with the Great Depression and Ronald Reagan had to contend with a Democratic controlled, progressive-minded Congress.

18-10. Presidential Power to Regulate: If you wonder about the legal aspects of how President Obama is able to rule like an arrogant king and without serious opposition, instead of a servant of the people, you will find the answer here. Laws brought about primarily by the previously discussed Progressive Movement provided the executive branch of government with excessive regulatory powers.

The power for the president to regulate in accordance with laws passed by Congress is not within itself a bad thing if limited and subject to renewal by Congress on a regular basis. The problem arises when the executive branch expands to the point of excessive control over individual freedoms. At that point, our capitalist-based American economy and our three-part political system become socialistic and fascist. Today, a centralized government grants American citizens their rights, not the original Nature and Nature’s God as stated in the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.

Sear into the deepest recesses of your prepper mind the fact that our nation began as an almost purely capitalist society with very little federal government control over commercial enterprise, and because of that, it became the greatest country on the face of the Earth. Deep penetrations made over time by the Progressive Movement caused this nation to slide closer to a fascism- based economic system, something that inevitably leads to the tyranny currently materializing in the U.S.

President Obama refuses to implement some federal laws and illegally changes others that he does not agree with or that will embarrass him. For example, he finesses ways not to deport illegal aliens and conversely attempts to provide them amnesty via executive fiat, ignoring constitutional law. He illegally made no less than forty-seven changes to his own centerpiece legislation, the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) in order to prevent embarrassment that would lead to losses for himself and other Democrats in the 2010, 2012, and 2014 elections.

Since 1890, controlled by the Progressive Movement and more recently by their propaganda machine, America’s capitalist economy has been converted to a fascist economy with elements of socialism supported by what is left of capitalism. That conversion is a direct result of laws passed by the legislative branch over time, laws that greatly increased executive branch regulatory power. Since the principal function of laws and regulations is to modify and/or control human behavior, left unchecked, this situation will result in the complete demise of what is left of our capitalist elements. The outcome will be an increasingly fascist state, resulting in economic collapse, with growing potential for a state of absolute anarchy to erupt.

18-11. Bureaucratic Power: Bureaucracies have an insatiable hunger to grow and gain more and more power. Every time a new law passes that provides the U.S. president additional regulatory power, the executive branch of government either expands the size of existing agencies or adds a new agency to write and enforce the regulations.

All previously passed laws remaining in force allow bureaucrats to expand their domains continuously. Once in place, they do not go away. Bureaucrats are skilled at finding ways to justify increasing their budgets to hire additional civil servants to write new regulations that require additional civil servants to enforce the regulations, thereby increasing their own lot and justifying their positions. Otherwise, they become irrelevant and unrequired in the public arena.

a. Need for Civil Servants: Although we need civil servants and regulations to some degree, the number has become unmanageable and has grown to the point of being uncontrollable. The following sections furnish insight into how out of control the lawmakers, over time, have become. How different this situation might be if citizens did not believe that Congress is not doing its job unless it creates new laws but rather believe that Congress passes too many laws to address problems better solved at the state and local levels.

b. Where Are They? It is almost impossible to determine the number of executive branch agencies and where they are located. One page on the White House website with the title of Federal Agencies & Commissions only makes vague reference to hundreds of federal agencies and commissions and provides a link to USA.gov for further research:

There are hundreds of federal agencies and commissions charged with handling such responsibilities as managing America’s space program, protecting its forests, and gathering intelligence. For a full listing of Federal Agencies, Departments, and Commissions, visit USA.gov.

The USA.gov website offers an option for viewing the list of government agencies, including state governments for some odd reason. If you click on each letter of the alphabet one at a time, you can view the list of agencies and, you would think, obtain an accurate count of agencies. Not so. You have to click on each of the agencies to see the assigned sub-agencies. It will make your head spin. For example, the Department of Agriculture has under its authority eighteen additional sub-agencies.

Challenge: Use the web link https://www.usa.gov/federal-agencies/a to view the list of agencies and sub-agencies. See how many you can find that have the federal government doing things that, according to the U.S. Constitution, are not listed as federal powers, but reserved for the states.

18-12. Social Security Trust Fund: The Social Security Trust Fund was set up in 1939 as a mechanism to receive and store Social Security taxes, or FICA. The government places FICA taxes deducted from employees’ pay into the Social Security Trust Fund. From there, the funds are distributed to Social Security recipients. The Social Security Trust Fund’s solvency is dependent upon workers paying more FICA taxes into the fund than recipients withdraw. Since that was the case for a long time, it begs the question: Why is the Social Security Trust Fund empty?

a. Baby Boomers: Early in the 1980s, it became obvious that when the Baby Boomers—those born between 1946 and 1964—started to retire in 2010, there would be insufficient funds to pay their Social Security benefits. Under a compromise with a Democratic Congress on April 20, 1983, President Reagan signed into law changes that increased FICA revenue to address expected shortfalls in outlying years. Under the plan, there was more money going into the fund than was being taken out. The extra money was supposed to provide a buffer for the Baby Boomers’ retirement when the FICA funds would be less than required to pay recipients. If left untouched, there should be enough FICA funds available in the trust fund to take care of Baby Boomers.

b. Empty Trust Fund: The Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees’ report, A Summary of the 2014 Annual Reports, plainly shows there should be $2,674,000,000,000 (two trillion six hundred and seventy-four billion dollars) in the trust fund as of the end of 2013, but the money is not there. Why?

The Social Security Trust Fund is empty because, over the years that taxes were being collected, Congress transferred the surplus to the general fund, replacing it with IOUs, and gave it to the executive branch to spend. The result: According to the Heritage Foundation, the government had to borrow $71,000,000,000 in 2013 to meet Social Security obligations. That is, Congress allowed the executive branch to “borrow” the excess funds of previous years to pay for unfunded social welfare programs and now has to borrow more money from other sources to pay social security recipients.

c. Results: This situation has created three major negative effects.

1.Increased Executive Branch Power: Over the past several decades, the executive branch “borrowed” the surplus Social Security Trust Fund money to expand the power of the executive branch, adding more departments and agencies and expanding existing departments and agencies that increased the burden of regulations over businesses and citizens.

2. Wealth Redistribution: The executive branch redistributed wealth from those who paid taxes to those who did not pay taxes.

3. Deficit Increases: Now that the Social Security Trust Fund receives less in taxes than it distributes to recipients, the annual deficit adds tens of billions of dollars—soon to be hundreds of billions, then trillions of dollars—to the national debt, bringing America ever closer to economic collapse.

18-13. The Propaganda Machine: The Progressive Movement is a political society with a culture that feeds on deception and lies. It cannot retain power without its propaganda machine. The most recent examples of deception as of the time of this writing are President Obama’s promises: “If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.”

a. Propaganda Theme: The overriding theme of progressive propaganda focuses on the following three subthemes:

1. America is Bad: Convincing U.S. citizens that America is a bad country, and that it deserves to be cleansed of its sins. Sins perpetrated primarily by white men against minorities, the environment, and other countries.

2. Only Government Knows Best: Government control over citizens’ lives is a good thing, but only if progressives are in control, possessing the all-encompassing governing power.

3. Capitalism is Evil: Capitalism is evil and progressives must eliminate it to ensure that everyone shares equally in the distribution of all resources.

b. Participants: The primary participants of the propaganda machine include the following:

1. Mainstream News Media, excluding Fox News

2. Entertainment Media

3. Public Education System

4. Progressive Politicians

5. Progressive Political Activists

6. Progressive Politically Active Organizations

7. Labor Unions

Note: Fox News is not considered a component of the mainstream media, which includes most of the major newspapers and the major television networks ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC.

c. Mainstream Media Bias: Beginning with the Lyndon Johnson administration’s expansion of the Vietnam War and the radical anti-American factors that war ushered in, over time most of the news media adopted a more fascist and socialist orientation. At first, their support for progressive political personalities and causes remained subtle, declaring themselves unbiased. As time progressed, they became more proactive in supporting the Democratic Party’s Progressive agenda, to the point that today mainstream media reporters and commentators are indistinguishable from Democratic Party political operatives.

The fact that media bias exists, of itself, is not the problem. Every reporter and commentator in every media outlet has biases, the same as all human beings. They should not allow their biases to keep them from reporting news that they do not like and employ overt deception to prevent Americans from learning the truth. The Bill Clinton campaign of 1992 is a prime example of the news media’s overt deceptive action taken to support a progressive candidate.

President George H. W. Bush foolishly agreed to a Democratic-controlled congressional tax hike in the middle of his presidency, causing the economy to dip immediately prior to the 1992 election. Tax hikes always have a delayed negative effect on the economy. Although the economy took an upswing before the election, the media picked the Clinton campaign theme “We are in an economic crisis” aka “It’s the economy, stupid” and drove the topic hard through Election Day. They never reported that the economy had generally improved under President Bush or that it was recovering at the time of the election, but kept parroting the Clinton doom and gloom story.

The instant Bill Clinton was declared the winner on Election Night the “economic crisis” suddenly evaporated and was never again mentioned by the media, except in jest. On Election Night, the physical reaction of media personalities on CNN, et al, was jubilation. Observers would have thought each had just won millions in the lottery, with big smiles and jubilation all around. At that time, CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC were unopposed by alternate views and had complete control of televisions news.

Note: Fox News did not exist, and Rush Limbaugh was the only nationally syndicated conservative talk radio program.

Two years later, in the midterm election, after Hillary Care scared the heck out of everyone, Americans revolted and gave the Republican Party control of both houses of the Congress, something that had not happened in over forty years. Television news media personalities looked as though they had been told every member of their immediate family just died in a terrible accident.

The difference in the reactions of the media between the two elections clearly showed where they stood. Today’s progressive reporters are more radical and overtly active than the 1992 television personalities they replaced. Now, they make no attempt to conceal their progressive bias in favor of fascism and socialism—although they lack the knowledge or insight to give correct definitions of either—and their extreme animosity toward conservatives.

Major newspapers and many Internet sites also participate in advancing the progressive cause, and they employ the same tactics of omission, misrepresentation, exaggeration, outright falsehoods, and other tactics that put the progressive agenda in a positive light and the conservative agenda in a negative light. There have been some nationally syndicated, progressive radio programs, such as Air America; however, they never draw a large audience and eventually fall by the wayside.

There is not enough room here to include all of the daily examples of progressive media bias. If you are skeptical but have an open mind, try this simple four-week exercise that will verify the truth for you. If you will not do this because of what you have heard about Fox News or Rush Limbaugh without performing your own analysis, then you must give up your claim to be open-minded.

1. Watch Fox News: Stop watching all television news programs except Fox News. Choose at least two Fox News programs that start between 6:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Watch the two programs at least three evenings during the week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Watch the primary Sunday program. If time is a factor, record them on your DVR and skip through the items that are not politically significant.

2. Listen to Rush: Listen to at least the first thirty to forty-five minutes—more is better—of the Rush Limbaugh radio show every day for the four weeks. You can pay a small fee and listen anytime without commercial time-outs via the archive at http://www.rushlimbaugh.com.

3. Return to Mainstream: At the end of the four weeks, return to watching the other major television news outlets for a few days and compare them to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.

During the exercise, look for patterns of progressive media bias and observe how it serves as a propaganda tool for the Progressive Movement.

d. Media Bias Elements: Here is a list of common progressive bias elements to observe:

1. Commission: Commission takes place when reporters generate or repeat inaccurate assumptions or false information in support of the progressive agenda, especially if the reporter does not present the opposing view. Note how often progressive reporters employ this tactic.

Note: My Book Web Link portal presents the first and second pages of a report by Progressive Alec MacGillis that includes examples of commission. The third link is the truth.

2. Labels: Labels evoke an emotional response toward a person or organization. Look for labels placed on persons, organizations, or ideas that influence the observer, reader, or listener’s opinion. Progressives assign conservatives labels such as extreme or radical right wing, ultra conservative, and others to make conservatives appear to reside outside the mainstream of American thinking. Progressives assign positive-sounding labels to other progressives, such as expert, well known, or refer to them by their professional titles.

When it was proven that the temperatures around the Earth were beginning to decrease, the term global warming was quickly replaced by climate change. That allows extreme environmentalists on the left to continue to obtain federal funding for their environmental studies projects.

3. Making Policy Statements: Progressive reporters often make explicit policy statements supporting things they think should be done: increasing taxes, passing a particular law, or imposing a regulation. They indirectly criticize capitalism, falsely stating how it has increased poverty, homelessness, unemployment, or many other things they define as social evils.

4. Omissions: Progressives reporting omissions include conservative information that counters the progressive perspective. Observers are not aware that omissions have occurred unless they are familiar with the reported subject. Watch Fox News and listen to Rush Limbaugh to learn the finer points of a story, then switch to the other networks and the omissions will be more obvious. Quite often, the progressive networks ignore important major stories as though they are not significant enough to report.

Jonathan Gruber’s (architect of Obamacare) YouTube accounts about the perverse means employed to sell Obamacare to what he termed the stupid American public is a prime example. Gruber’s admission that the Obama administration employed trickery to get the law passed through Congress was one of the major news events of that year. Other than Fox News, it took several days before the mainstream media mentioned the story, and then they only gave it minimal significance and discussion time.

5. Placement: If you search for major stories that should be front-page news but find them buried deep inside newspapers, online news outlets, and magazines where most readers will not see them, you can bet they were intentionally treated as unimportant because they support the conservative cause or are harmful to the progressive cause.

Another means of buried placement in a newspaper is to include the main information deeper in the story. Most people only read the first paragraph or two of any story to get the summary information. If the main points that counter the progressive perspective are placed in the middle of the story, its significance is either diminished or simply not read.

On television, a major story that should be the lead story but is given only a few minutes of discussion halfway through the program and just before a commercial break is an example of progressive bias placement.

6. Source Selection: Source selection includes using sources to give legitimacy to a biased story while omitting sources with opposing views. Progressive reporting typically includes many sources supporting their personal view. They also employ ambiguous, unsupported statements such as “many people say,” or “most experts believe,” or “many have observed,” to make their statements appear valid. It is also common for progressive reporters to employ experts that only support their perspective without including experts with a counter perspective.

7. Spin: Spin is interpretation and takes place when reporters put their own spin (one-sided emphasis) on the positive aspects of a political viewpoint that favors the progressive perspective and then their spin on the negative aspects that rebuff the conservative point of view. While politicians live by their own spin, a reporter should fairly present all major viewpoints. Progressive reporters often employ false, misleading, or incomplete, facts.

8. Story Selection: Story selection is akin to omission. It includes emphasizing stories that support the progressive agenda while trivializing or completely ignoring stories that support the conservative agenda. Another tactic is to extensively discuss the progressive point of view, but then provide only a few sentences pertaining to the conservative perspective. Sometimes, progressive reporters will also allow video or audio presentations of the progressive politician speaking on his own behalf, but they do not allow the conservative presentations, opting instead to speak for the conservative point of view in a few words of weak rebuttal.

The main thing to remember about all of this is that progressives have to be false and misleading in order to maintain power. This cannot occur without a sufficient number of uninformed citizens—who are subject to emotional reactions to the progressive propaganda—buying into the misleading information, because they do not use logical analysis and reasoning to explore the conservative’s position.

 9. Outright Support: Today, all of the mainstream TV news media outlets are filled with so-called “objective reporters” that openly support Democratic Party candidates and the Progressive Movement toward socialism.

e. Entertainment Media Complicity: Progressives permeate the entertainment industry. They often intentionally infuse their products with false images of America, which subtly influences our way of thinking over time. They aim their stories and music toward the view that America is a bad country. Typically, they portray the U.S. military as crazed, mindless robots bent on destruction of everything in their path without regard to moral standards. A few examples include the movie, The Grapes of Wrath, any of the antiwar and antimilitary songs of the 1960s, and movies created during and after the Vietnam War such as Apocalypse Now, Friendly Fire, and Avatar to name a few. (Yes. Avatar. Didn’t Avatar make you think all soldiers are knuckle-draggers and cause you to hate the military?)

Entrepreneurs, business executives, and capitalists in general are falsely portrayed as heartless and ruthless, only focusing on money, not the human condition or human needs. The entertainment media constantly inundates impressionable teens and young adults with images and music that run counter to America’s high moral standards. Today’s idolized sports figures too often conduct themselves publicly in immoral ways that have a negative impact on younger people.

f. Education System: The Progressive Movement has taken complete control of America’s public education system at all levels. Universities and colleges for decades have been indoctrinating—brainwashing, actually—primary school educators with skewed American history and progressive-minded fascist and socialist propaganda. They employ educational materials replete with misleading, incomplete, or outright untruthful information, portraying white men in particular as evil and all others as victims.

Today’s educators impart distorted and misguided perspectives on American history, especially as it relates to the Founding Fathers, and demonize conservative political views and conservative politicians. Educators no longer have the educational foundation that affords them the capacity to teach our children unbiased American history and our system of government. How can teachers that were never introduced to the truth teach it?

The study of cultural diversity has replaced the concept of individual accomplishments. Students are required to learn how the white man enslaved Africans and slaughtered Native Americans. They learn next to nothing about the accomplishments of patriots, such as the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and the heavy sacrifices they and their families made to create a country (America) free from British tyranny. They do not learn what that British tyranny entailed. Those patriots all lost their fortunes and many lost their own lives fighting to give freedom to the rest of the nation.

Ask any high school graduate to name the three branches of government and explain their responsibilities and functions. Ask them to explain the British atrocities that brought about the Revolutionary War. Who was John Jay? How did The Federalist Papers of Publius push New York politicians into agreeing to ratify the U.S. Constitution, and why was that important? Do not expect any response other than a dead stare. They also cannot tell you when or why any of the multiple wars occurred or who the current vice president of the United States is, what happened to the Soviet Union, or who gave us the courage to go to the moon—and the list goes on. Our children are growing up without a sense of how valuable it is to be an American.

While declaring openness and diversity of thought on college campuses, the opposite is true. Progressive-minded university administrators, professors, and students take aggressive action to create obstacles to anyone expressing conservative thought on campus. The progressives prevent conservative leaders from participating in graduation ceremonies or special events where they present a point of view that differs from their own. Halting diversity of thought is one of the major steps being taken to convert America to a socialist state.

Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn are prime examples of how the Progressive Movement has worked its way into college campuses. Both were major players in the Students for a Democratic Society and Weather Underground radical movements of the 1960s and 1970s. They were involved in violent actions against the U.S., taking responsibility for bombing the Pentagon, U.S. Capitol, and police stations in New York.

I will leave the details of the violent action for your research; there is plenty of it on the Internet. Suffice it to say, they participated in a number of actions intended to overthrow the hated government. They still believe America is a bad country.

So what’s the point? Bill Ayers, at the time of this writing, is a professor of education at the University of Illinois, and Dohrn is an associate professor and director at Northwestern University. Both still maintain their radical views and refuse to apologize for their violent actions. What vision of America are they presenting to these yet-to-be-fully-developed, immature, uninformed students attending their classes? There are thousands more just like them scattered across our nation, influencing our young Americans to accept their poisonous perspectives. America is starting to overflow with young brainwashed socialists and may be the most dangerous threat to our constitutionally guaranteed personal freedoms and long-term security.

Why is all of this important? If we do not know how and why our roots were established, then it will assuredly be difficult, if not impossible, to re-establish New America as originally instituted and return our society to its former exceptionality and greatness.

Let there be no mistake, Progressives control the education system at all levels and nothing will change until after the die-off, when they all succumb to the famine and no longer exist. You can rest assured that there is not one prepper among them, which is a very good thing.

g. Democratic Party: Progressive politicians now control the Democratic Party. The moderate Democrats that compromised with the Republican Party many decades ago have been displaced by those who promote a fascist agenda, some desirous of a socialist agenda. The Democrats truly believe they know better how we should live our lives than we do. They, along with the willing support of an ignorant media, continue to demonize those who want to reverse course and decrease the size of the executive branch and its regulatory authority, eliminate those departments created since the Carter Administration, and return the social welfare programs to the states, thereby returning power to the states and local governments. Progressives thrive on power of control over the masses.

h. Try to Convince Other Progressives: Once you have gained insight into the progressive media bias, begin to discuss your exercise with progressive/liberal friends and acquaintances and watch their reactions. They will probably become very indignant and tell you how terrible Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are. If you ask them how often they watch or listen to these two news outlets, they are likely to declare sarcastically that they never have and never will. That tells you all that you need to know about the success that progressive media has on too many Americans.

i. Expectations: Do not expect a return to our original American political roots before the collapse. The progressive propaganda machine holds sway over too many ill-informed voters, influencing them to vote with their emotions instead of their knowledge of the issues.

18-14. Voter Apathy and Ignorance: Too many American voters are indifferent to the political arena, preferring to engage in mindless entertainment until Election Day, then they vote on pure emotion instead of a good analysis of the long-term effect candidates will have on our nation. Democrats are elected based on feel-good politics.

18-15. Influx of Illegal Aliens and the Welfare State: Personal Note: Many will interpret the information in this section as anti-immigrant or outright racism on my part. Considering that I was married for twenty-two years to a dark-skinned, Puerto Rican woman and have such offspring of my own that I love very much, you can disregard any feelings you may have toward me in this regard.

It ain’t so. What I present in this section are facts, not simple-minded opinion. My opinion that America is losing its identity, in a large part, is based on the facts I present here. The facts are what count, not my opinion or that of anyone else for that matter.

The mental attitude of Americans generally leans toward assisting other Americans, especially those on the lower rungs of the economy, to make a good living, buy a home, a car, cell phone, cable TV, clothes, food, clean water, electricity, etc. Many, if not most, of us believe those things should come from jobs offered by an unencumbered capitalist economy. We also believe in giving a temporary helping hand to those hit with hard times.

Prior to the LBJ Great Society Program, charitable organizations and city and county governments—with some assistance from state governments—provided a safety net for those in need on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. Local city and county governments had a big stake in monitoring for welfare cheating and keeping cost down, while providing for the survival needs of poor people and those who could not take care of themselves due to physical or mental conditions that were no fault of their own.

Now that the central government, i.e., the executive branch controls the welfare system with little or no oversight, we have an enormous multigenerational group of citizens that exist almost entirely off welfare. They live in public housing, receive special credit cards for purchasing food, receive free medical care, and that is just the beginning. According to Senator Jeff Sessions (ranking member of the U.S. Budget Committee), there are at least eighty-three identifiable, overlapping federal welfare programs, which is the biggest item in the federal budget and growing annually.

What does the welfare state have to do with the issue of illegal aliens? The answer is obvious. There is no longer sufficient oversight at the local level to prevent fraud. The exorbitant number on welfare has reached proportions that prevent serious fraud detection, and it is not possible to prevent illegal aliens from receiving welfare benefits at the expense of American citizens.

Immigration into the U.S., generally, was a good thing during America’s earlier history. Like all good things, however, too much can be overwhelming, disturbing, and dangerous. The illegal aliens crossing the border into the U.S. come from countries with less prosperous living conditions. Those countries do not have public mindsets toward citizens having a right to a living, a home, a car, cell phones, cable TV, clothes, food, clean water, electricity, etc. Once illegal aliens arrive in America, many have babies at taxpayers’ expense and immediately go onto the welfare rolls. The babies are considered U.S. citizens and offer an anchor to the entire family, giving us the term anchor babies.

Those who support illegal aliens coming to and remaining in America maintain that they contribute to the country more than they receive. That is not true. There are millions of illegal aliens receiving billions of dollars in this manner. Consider the following quote from the Heritage Foundation Special Report #133 on Immigration:

In 2010, the average unlawful immigrant household received around $24,721 in government benefits and services while paying some $10,334 in taxes. This generated an average annual fiscal deficit (benefits received minus taxes paid) of around $14,387 per household. This cost had to be borne by U.S. taxpayers. Amnesty would provide unlawful households with access to over 80 means-tested welfare programs, Obamacare, Social Security, and Medicare. The fiscal deficit for each household would soar.

American citizens can live fairly well, relatively speaking, off the welfare state, making a higher rate of pay through services, food stamps, and other benefits than if they work. They have no incentive to perform the menial and often labor-intensive tasks that illegal aliens are more than willing to do. The thinking goes like this: If I, as a welfare recipient, enjoy life at the expense of other Americans, why should I perform menial tasks or work under a hot sun for a less enjoyable life? If the federal welfare state ended today, and everyone did the right thing, those on welfare would have to work if they wanted to eat. The concept of working for a living and becoming self-reliant would be reinstated.

Doing the right thing means that able-bodied welfare recipients accept that they would have to take the jobs that illegals now have without complaining about it. How likely do you think that is to happen? Those whose existence is dependent on the welfare system, especially multigenerational recipients, would not accept having to work for a living until it became apparent that they would die of starvation if they did not work. Then it is doubtful that they would be very productive.

We know, however, that no one would do the right thing. It only takes common sense to know that illegals will not voluntary deport themselves and longtime welfare recipients will not look kindly upon letting go of nursing on the nanny-state teats to become hardworking and self-reliant. That is simply not going to happen. Instead, the inner cities would begin to burn and social collapse would ensue.

If not for the LBJ Great Society Program, Americans would have remained engaged in the work that millions of illegal aliens now perform, and we would not have the current nanny-state mentality, something we cannot overcome without extreme societal turmoil. It is irrelevant that many in our society believe that everyone should have the same living standard. No one citizen owes any other citizen anything past assistance with his survival needs when he cannot find work. Moreover, the work does not have to be in his field of expertise. That may sound unsympathetic or insensitive, but is nothing more than a statement of fact.

Some Americans will always live better than other Americans will. The debate about the question of whether those who have more should provide for those who have less is not the point. That is an emotional issue. In this study guide, we stick to discussing the facts that influence the potential for economic collapse—including TEOTWAWKI—and how the lessons learned can be used to address social issues during reconstructing New America after the die-off.

To progressives, this sounds harsh, but is exactly how America stood a century ago. Citizens worked for their survival needs. Family members, church and civic organizations, friends, neighbors, and others helped when someone lost a job, became injured or ill, had a crop failure, etc. Prior to the LBJ Great Society programs, local governments controlled the welfare programs, providing a more effective and less expensive means of addressing unfortunate citizens’ survival needs.

The bottom line is that illegal aliens—in the U.S. in the millions, but nobody knows how many—are a net drain on the American economy, something that did not exist several decades ago. The Internet site below gives the pros and cons of the effect of illegal aliens on the economy. Note the pro side of the argument ignores or glosses over many of the con arguments about the cost of illegal aliens.

Those in favor of illegal aliens coming to America without any restrictions do not address the dozens of hospitals closing or going into bankruptcy in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, because the federal government requires that they provide free emergency room care, educational costs to educate non-English speaking children, and incarcerate thousands of illegal alien criminals. The big question: If we cannot eliminate the influx, will America eventually become another third world nation itself?

It is interesting to note that illegal aliens in the U.S. now perform higher skilled work. Many are no longer fruit-pickers, table-cleaners and floor-sweepers, but are carpenters, concrete workers, painters, plumbers, electricians, flooring installation specialists, heating and air conditioning specialists, and even business owners. They are not only taking away lower-skilled American jobs, but have been steadily moving into middle-class territory as well.

Finally, if illegal aliens were to be heavily inclined to vote Republican, we would not have this issue. The progressives know they will vote mostly for Democrats, because the Democrats are the ones that will ensure they continue to receive welfare benefits, becoming dependent upon the executive branch of our government. Eventually, progressives will obtain permanent control over all of our lives. When that happens, America will fall into decline and eventually experience societal and economic collapse.

18-16. Entitlement Spending: This brings us to the final factor pointing to a looming economic collapse: entitlement spending. We are not considering previously discussed social welfare spending in this section. Entitlement spending includes funding that goes to pay for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, agriculture price support, unemployment compensation, and military and federal employee retirement annuities. Those costs have increased to the point they will soon be unsustainable.

By the time a baby born in 2015 is twenty years old, all taxes going into the federal coffers will only pay for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the interest on the national debt. There will be no funding for anything else, including national defense, air traffic control, government employees’ salaries, welfare programs, maintaining the interstate highway system, federal courts, or anything else that government does. It is obvious that a national crisis will take place well before then. There are not enough trillions of dollars in the world to pay for the unfunded future outlays. The collapse will occur well before then.

18-17. The Federal Reserve System: In this section, I provide an overview of my perspective of the role the Federal Reserve System—informally referred to as the Fed—plays in support of the Progressive Movement’s efforts to finance the welfare state and serve as a tool by the left to make the U.S. Constitution less relevant. Refer to the Web Link portal for many Internet research links on this topic. It is very important to you.

The Federal Reserve System is the central bank of the United States. President Woodrow Wilson, an intensely progressive-minded president, signed it into law in 1913. It consists mainly of a seven-member Board of Governors and twelve Federal Reserve banks. The governors are appointed to fourteen-year terms by the president and confirmed by the senate. The people elect none of them. The establishment of a central bank is not one of the enumerated powers of the federal government under the Constitution and is an example of another tool the Progressive Movement implemented early on to gain control over our lives and transform America into a socialist state, their ultimate goal.

Note: The Federal Reserve System, with all of its components, its rules and regulations, stock ownership questions, domestic and foreign associated entities, and activities is so complex and convoluted that it is impossible for anyone to comprehend the full extent of its true purpose, activities, and ownership, much less provide an explanation of these things in this limited format. If any reader understands the system and finds fault with my description, please provide information or corrections to me by clicking CONTACT THE AUTHOR at https://absoluteanarchybook.com. I will provide updates on the website and in future editions.

a. Who Owns the Federal Reserve System? According to our Constitution, there are three branches of government. Congress writes laws, the president (executive) signs and administers laws, and the judiciary determines if laws are constitutional. The Federal Reserve System remains outside of these boundaries. Who specifically owns the Federal Reserve System stocks?

I have not been able to find a reasonable answer to that question. Some analysis indicates that the stockholders in Federal Reserve banks are foreign-owned. That means that foreign stockholders may have indirect policy-making power over the U.S. economy.

Here in the Federal Reserve System’s own FAQ webpage is their response to their own question, “Who owns the Federal Reserve?”

The Federal Reserve System fulfills its public mission as an independent entity within government. It is not “owned” by anyone and is not a private, profit-making institution.

As the nation’s central bank, the Federal Reserve derives its authority from the Congress of the United States. It is considered an independent central bank because its monetary policy decisions do not have to be approved by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branches of government, it does not receive funding appropriated by the Congress, and the terms of the members of the Board of Governors span multiple presidential and congressional terms.

However, the Federal Reserve is subject to oversight by the Congress, which often reviews the Federal Reserve’s activities and can alter its responsibilities by statute. Therefore, the Federal Reserve can be more accurately described as “independent within the government” rather than “independent of government.”

The 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks, which were established by the Congress as the operating arms of the nation’s central banking system, are organized similarly to private corporations–possibly leading to some confusion about “ownership.” For example, the Reserve Banks issue shares of stock to member banks. However, owning Reserve Bank stock is quite different from owning stock in a private company. The Reserve Banks are not operated for profit, and ownership of a certain amount of stock is, by law, a condition of membership in the System. The stock may not be sold, traded, or pledged as security for a loan; dividends are, by law, 6 percent per year.

Based on the ownership question, here are other questions that cause me to wonder about the constitutionality of the Federal Reserve System:

1. Who In Government Has Oversight? The Fed says that Congress has oversight. However, according to the basic precepts of the U.S. Constitution, Congress passes laws and the president oversees carrying out of the laws. Why is it that “monetary policy decisions do not have to be approved by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branches of government?” It may be “subject to oversight by the Congress,” but due to the slow pace for that process, especially if the president and Congress are in disagreement, how can we be assured any corrective action will take place in time to avert an economic disaster?

As far as I can see, the Federal Reserve Bank can pretty much do as it pleases.

2. If the Federal Reserve System is not owned by anybody and is not operated for profit, how can it pay 6 percent dividends per year, and whom do they pay the 6 percent? Perhaps there is a logical answer, but I was not able to determine it, unless it pays the 6 percent before sending the remainder to the U.S. Treasury. Maybe I am missing something. I definitely do not understand the following quote—taken from the Federal Reserve System website FAQ page—that seems to counter the Federal Reserve System claims in its own words:

Federal Reserve Banks generate their own income, primarily from interest earned on government securities that are acquired in the course of Federal Reserve monetary policy actions. A secondary source of income is derived from the provision of priced services to depository institutions, as required by the Monetary Control Act of 1980. Federal Reserve Banks are not, however, operated for a profit, and each year they return to the U.S. Treasury all earnings in excess of Federal Reserve operating and other expenses.

First thought: What are the “other expenses”?

Second thought: This explanation of how the Federal Reserve System does not technically make a profit does not hold water, considering that the Federal Reserve System is a government entity that is not a government entity that gives itself the profit it makes, handing those profits to the executive branch to spend. Confused? So Am I.

Third thought: If I read this correctly, the Federal Reserve System generates money from nothing and then loans it to the executive branch by purchasing securities from the Treasury Department, and then receives a profit from the executive branch on the money it loaned to the executive branch, which it returns to the executive branch. I assume that, because the executive branch does not receive enough revenue from taxes, the executive branch is able to pay a profit to the Federal Reserve System by borrowing more money from the Federal Reserve System.

(Read it again.)

Then again, perhaps the executive branch is able to pay the Federal Reserve System interest on loans by borrowing money from China or elsewhere. It is a dilemma. Does anybody understand any of this?

Note: As far as I can tell, there is a difference between the 6 percent dividend paid to stockholders—whoever they are—and the profit that goes to the executive branch.

b. Powers of the Federal Reserve System: The Federal Reserve System has tremendous power over the economy and is one of the major reasons for our current tenuous economic condition. According to the Federal Reserve System’s own website FAQ page, it admits to “…influencing money and credit conditions in the economy in pursuit of full employment and stable prices.” Employment and price stabilization via government fiat is a socialist goal that a self-correcting capitalist market does not require. The Federal Reserve System has other powers, but we need to get to the bottom line on how they have manipulated the money supply to bolster the progressives’ agenda of taxing, borrowing, and spending that will eventually drive our economy into bankruptcy.

c. Authority of the Federal Reserve System: The Federal Reserve System has authority to generate money from nothing, as much money as it wants. By controlling the money supply, the Federal Reserve System, in effect, controls the way we live. It uses quantitative easing (QE) to load the banks with phony money, and then borrows the money back to pay for excessive government spending that goes beyond revenue derived from taxes. A progressive economist could make your head spin trying to explain the details of how this takes place and make you think it is something it is not.

For you and me, it is simple: The Federal Reserve System loads banks, government entities—especially Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae—and private entities with money that does not exist through the purchase of securities. The purpose is to stimulate the economy. It also has the effect of making a lot of money available for the U.S. Treasury to acquire by selling its own securities. Isn’t it interesting that about 13-14 percent of the total U.S. debt is owed to the U.S. Treasury Department itself? As I write, that is about 2,500,000,000,000 dollars.

How long this cycle of the Federal Reserve System purchasing bonds to infuse money into the economy, and the U.S. Treasury selling bonds to take a chunk of that money from the economy, will last, no one can say with certainty. We do know that quantitative easing is not sustainable long-term and will eventually result in an economic crisis. When the crash comes, only those who are prepared to sustain themselves will survive the chaos that follows.

d. Quantitative Easing: So, how does the Obama administration keep from falling on its socialist behind? In 2009, the Federal Reserve System began to employ a technique called quantitative easing, or QE. QE calls for the Federal Reserve System to credit special accounts in banks with digital money, money from nothing, by purchasing securities. Banks give the Federal Reserve System a security, maybe in the form of a piece of paper, and the Federal Reserve System electronically adds digits to the banks’ accounts. Nobody is printing the billions of greenbacks and counting them out on a table. The money is sent in the form of electronic pulses.

The given excuse is to flood money into the economy for companies to use to expand existing businesses or create new businesses and for people to use to make purchases. As of 2015, it has been an utter failure and placed the country’s economic situation in jeopardy. It’s like playing with Monopoly money. Try to tell your bank that you want your part of quantitative easing pie and see what happens.

QE is supposed to jump-start the economy and put people to work. The result has been to greatly increase the value of stocks, not expand business. Businesses are not expanding or being created, due in major part to excessive executive branch regulations and the highest corporate taxes in the entire world. That is, the cost of doing business is so high that it makes more sense to invest the money in the stock market or U.S. Treasury securities and simply sit on the money. At zero interest rate for the banks, it doesn’t cost the banks anything to keep the money—actually electronic digital signals stored on a server—and do nothing with it.

This is why the Department of Labor statistics report of July 2, 2015, shows the employment participation rate of less than 63 percent. That means ninety-three million Americans who are capable of working do not have jobs. You have to do the math, but the statistics are in the report.

We are in a cat-chasing-its-tail situation. The progressives started QE in August 2011, under then-Federal Reserve System Chairman Ben Bernanke, and now it cannot be stopped without setting the executive branch up to go bankrupt and/or potentially creating hyperinflation. That would not bode well for Obama and the rest of the progressives seeking office. Therefore, they keep pumping the money into the economy to keep it from failing in the short-term.

e. The Progressive Problem: I repeat myself here for review purposes. For fascism and socialism to succeed in the short run—they never succeed in the long run—the central government must spend tons of money to continuously prop up social welfare and entitlement programs. It is not possible to obtain enough revenue via taxes from what is left of the capitalist sector to satisfy these ever-expanding expenditures. Therefore, the executive branch must borrow a lot of money to pay for food stamps, public housing, welfare programs of all kinds, Medicare and Medicaid, federal employees, retired federal workers, social security recipients, and the list goes on.

If money is not available to borrow, the executive branch goes bankrupt and societal collapse ensues, followed by a state of absolute anarchy. (Yes, it is going to eventually happen anyway, but just follow along for now.) As long as the Democratic Party Progressives and their propaganda machine can fool enough voters, they will retain the power to continue their fascist and socialist agenda.

f. The Citizens’ Problems: There are three major problems with the executive branch generating and borrowing money: inflation, the U.S. government’s credit rating, and the national debt. Many argue that the Federal Reserve System is independent, not controlled by the executive branch. Well, it certainly does not belong to the legislative branch or the judicial branch.

1. Inflation: As more and more money is pushed into the economy, the value of the dollar lessens. It’s a supply and demand issue. To illustrate, suppose the money supply were to be suddenly limited to a thousand dollars per citizen. Money would have great value because of the small supply. A dollar would have enormous purchase power. Now, suppose the money supply was increased to ten billion dollars per citizen. It is obvious that the value of a dollar would be worthless, and you would need a lot more dollars to purchase any goods or services, assuming anyone would take them.

Hence, the more money the Federal Reserve System pushes into the economy, the less valuable the dollars in your purse. That is inflation and is commonly referred to as the hidden tax. You do not pay it to the government, but the government, by artificially inflating prices, decreases your purchasing power; hence, the hidden tax. Since it does not come directly out of your pocket, you do not feel its effects until you suddenly find that you have insufficient funds to pay all the bills at the end of the month.

The rate of inflation eventually reaches a point at which it increases at an unsustainable rate and the economy falls into a state of hyperinflation. At that point, the price of goods and services—especially food and fuel—pass the point of affordability. When a month’s worth of food stamps will only purchase a day’s worth of food, the economy collapses and chaos in cities ensues. Those living in small towns and rural areas will also be equally affected, but they do not have cities to burn.

2. Credit Rating: The credit rating of the U.S. government was decreased in August 2011 by Standard and Poor’s. I will leave it to your research to learn the details. When it becomes obvious that the U.S. cannot repay its debts, the credit rating will take a dive and the U.S. will not be able to borrow the money it needs to meet its social welfare and entitlement obligations, again giving rise to societal collapse. No amount of quantitative easing will solve the problem. In fact, QE would make the situation worse by exacerbating the inflation problem. Quantitative easing is very likely the progressives’ political response to the credit rating having been lowered.

3. National Debt: The big question with the national debt: Who is going to pay it off? Answer: It is so huge that it is impossible to pay off. Past generations have, and our own generation will, simply pass it on to future generations. At least, that has been the historical trend. Considering that it doubled under the Obama administration and has no end in sight, at some point it has to bring about an economic collapse; it is inevitable.

Again, no amount of QE activity will save us from a collapse due to an oversized, unmanageable national debt. No matter how much money the Federal Reserve System injects into the economy to help the executive branch pay the bills, it cannot stop the unavoidable and predictable inflation that is taking place. The dramatic decrease in oil prices—at the time of this writing—is moderating inflation to some degree, but that will only last until the supply of oil decreases as it become unprofitable for many companies to continue to produce it.

18-18. Progressive Movement’s Legacy: The Progressive Movement’s march toward socialism resulted not only in placing the American economy on the track to inevitable collapse, but it created a constitutional crisis between the executive and legislative branches. The untenable social problems that created with those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder will only be resolved after the die-off.

a. Constitutional Crisis: Because of the Progressive Movement’s success in the subtle transfer of power from the people to the executive branch, today the President of the United States of America governs outside of the U.S. Constitution in a fashion more suited to that of an autocrat than an equal branch of government. His power to control the country through government regulations and the influence of the Progressive Movement’s propaganda machine is the only explanation for why he gets away with not compromising with Congress or adhering to the will of the people.

b. Loss of Rights: As we all know, under the original constitutional concept of governance, as derived from the Declaration of Independence, citizens received their rights from the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God. That concept in the U.S. is dead. We now look to the executive branch to bequeath whatever rights President Obama and his unconstitutionally appointed czars deem that American citizens should have. Beware of those who will vehemently argue against the concept of where our rights come from because God is not specifically mentioned in the U.S. Constitution.

Here is a partial list of some of the issues that have imposed a negative effect on America’s sense of individual freedom and national security and that bring us closer to societal collapse:

1. Unconscionable Use of Senate: Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader 2007-2014, protected President Obama from having to veto or sign bills that conflict with his progressive agenda. How? He refused to put forward for senate discussion and vote almost four hundred bills presented by the House of Representatives. They died on Reid’s desk, or perhaps, in his trashcan.

2. Bank Intimidation: Through Operation Choke Point, the executive branch intimidates banks into refusing banking and credit card service to businesses with which they do not agree. The list has thirty businesses, including those that sell ammunition and firearms.

3. Forced Income Redistribution: Half of our citizens live in part or in whole on funding provided by the other half.

4. Forced Participation in Obamacare: Health insurance and healthcare is skyrocketing, while becoming less available. Millions of people who liked their plans and liked their doctors lost both to Obamacare. The number of people who were without insurance remains unchanged or may have slightly risen.

5. Propaganda Machine: The news media, education system, entertainment industry, and politicians in the Democratic Party (all progressives) distort American history, denigrate religion and the military, and withhold truth and mislead an increasingly ill-informed and uninterested citizenry.

6. Loss of Security: Our enemies, especially Russia, Islamic terrorist organizations, China, Iran, and North Korea no longer fear us. They are moving forward with their ungodly, dangerous agendas that directly threaten our security. Our allies can no longer depend upon us to lead them into restraining or destroying our common adversaries and sworn enemies. Neither our enemies nor allies respect our president. This situation has created a dangerous loss of security for our citizens.

7. Illegals’ Assault on America: Because they will vote for the progressives in the Democratic Party, Obama refuses to close our southern border, allowing millions of illiterate and disease-ridden illegal aliens, including gang members and Islamic terrorists, to flood into our country.

8. Racial Assault on Whites: Christians, especially white male Christians, are under attack from atheists, the media, the education system, the entertainment industry, and our own government.

9. unemployment: Tens of millions of our citizens are out of work or underemployed, and millions have given up trying to find a job.

10. Attack on Energy Producers: The executive branch is overtly attacking oil and coal industries, resulting in thousands of jobs lost in electricity production and the coal industry and driving up the cost of energy.

11. Excessive Corporate Taxes: Progressives have pushed U.S. corporate taxes to become the highest on the planet, causing businesses to leave, taking at least $2,000,000,000,000 to other countries. These monies could have been retained in America to invest in commercial enterprises that generate millions of jobs for our unemployed and underemployed citizens.

12. Job Exportation: Industries have moved millions of jobs overseas to escape the excessive regulations.

13. Suppression of First Amendment Rights: The executive branch uses government, the IRS and Department of Justice, to intimidate citizens and suppress their constitutional rights.

c. Hyperinflation: So, what will occur when the economy fails? We will discuss the details of how a state of anarchy will unfold in Chapter 4. For now, this is a quick look at the most likely logical result when the U.S. dollar collapses and hyperinflation takes place.

1. Fuel: Fuel prices reach a price point that causes truck drivers to stop transporting food to city markets.

2. Welfare Funding: Insufficient funding for the welfare system fails to sustain those who rely on it for their livelihood. Inflation will render EBT cards useless. The price of a loaf of bread will cost more than a handful of loaded EBT cards (food stamps) can pay.

3. Food Supplies: Food supplies are depleted, with food purchased and stolen within three to five days, emptying shelves and causing large portions of the populace to starve.

4. Inner-city Unrest: Inner-city communities—possibly within hours of the collapse and prior to food supplies becoming depleted—experience massive unrest with widespread rioting and looting.

5. Refugees: Massive exodus from cities into suburbs, then the countryside, and finally into rural areas will ensue. The exodus includes the bad guys from the worst neighborhoods to the Manhattan multi-millionaires. When you run out of food and begin to starve, you leave town in search of it. Most refugees will be traveling on foot either immediately or within a day or two as roads become jammed and/or the supply of gasoline is depleted.

6. Savagery: Violence erupts from organized gangs and desperate citizens in their attempt to acquire food and meet their other survival needs: water, shelter, and security.

7. Militias: Small communities and towns in rural areas organize defense groups or militias for protection, engaging the gangs and other bad guys with firearms.

8. Disease: Refugees, within a few days, experience diseases as they become dehydrated or drink unsafe water from ponds and streams or eat contaminated food.

9. Out-of-Control Crime: Substantial increase in major crimes and a reduction in the population due to roving gangs and ordinary citizens moving through suburbs and the countryside in search of food or valuables to trade for food. Robberies, murders, and rapes occur on a massive scale. Within several weeks, citizens die by the millions from bullets, starvation, disease, and weather exposure.

10. Starvation: Food supplies diminish within a few weeks and many begin to starve. Regardless of any good intentions by the government or good people to help, if there is no food, humans cannot live.

11. Die-off: Within a month, the die-off is well underway and may last for sixty to ninety days, with some surviving perhaps through the first 180 days.

d. State of Absolute Anarchy: Very rapidly, we will reach a state of absolute anarchy, and the U.S. Constitution and all laws will become irrelevant and unenforceable. Federal, state, and local governments will be impotent to re-establish and maintain civil order. There will not be enough members of the military and law enforcement to handle the entire national population of well over three hundred million starving citizens. Law enforcement officials and military members will be forced to abandon their posts to rush home and protect their own families and property. Simply put, citizens will be on their own to fend for themselves.

Logic also dictates that at some point early in this process, it will become evident to senior government leadership at the federal, state, and local levels that they cannot restore and maintain civil order. Their attempts to maintain it will not be effective.

The state of absolute anarchy will most probably last a year or two with the most dangerous and critical time being the first 180 days. Eradicating the gangs pouring out of the cities, contending with the people dying of starvation, and restoring civil order will be on the shoulders of the remaining law officers and militias that will develop during the die-off. Most law enforcement and military personnel will die.

It is important for anyone unfamiliar with prepping to understand that only a few on the fringe will convert trucks to armored vehicles, install underground bunkers and tunnel systems around their homes, turn mountain retreats into fortresses, and do all of the sensationalized things National Geographic presents to the public in their Doomsday Prepper TV series. The average preppers want to remain undetected and have a means for sufficient security and store enough food, seeds, and other supplies prior to the die-off to enable them to live self-reliantly, providing themselves and their families with their survival needs, either solo or within a prepper group without outside assistance.

18-19. Nothing Will Change: As much as I would like this not to be true, the facts lead us to conclude that the pre-anarchy state of affairs will remain unaffected. The propaganda machine is powerful enough to lead too many ignorant voters astray and keep them from the truth, that it is impossible for any single leader or political party to reverse the trend toward economic collapse.

The change required to reverse course and reinstate governance in accordance with the U.S. Constitution will occur only after the die-off. A collapse and die-off are necessary to eliminate the progressives and their ignorant followers before the Constitution envisioned by our Founding Fathers can be reinstated.

There was a time when our rights were determined by a centralized government—King George III and his governors. As described in the Declaration of Independence, we declared that our rights originated from the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, not the king. Implementation of the U.S. Constitution several years after the Revolutionary War was designed to secure those rights. Over time and with the consent of the legislative branch, a centralized power—the executive branch of government, i.e., the president—once again determines our human rights. Obama took it upon himself to become a one-man show, an autocrat who ignores the will of the people.

It does not matter which party—Republican or Democrat—has primary control of the legislative and executive branches, nothing is going to change. The only difference between the two parties is the speed at which they push America toward economic collapse: when Democrats are in charge, the speed increases; when Republicans are in charge, the speed decreases. However, the edge of the cliff keeps getting closer and we must prepare for it. Those who do prepare are the ones most likely to survive the die-off.

Nobody has the insight, courage, or ability to overpower the progressive propaganda machine and make the changes necessary to stop the collapse. No party or president will or can eliminate unnecessary departments and agencies, decrease the executive branch to a fraction of its current size, return control of the welfare programs to the states, eliminate corporate taxes, eliminate Islamic terrorists, close the borders completely, wipe out illegal drugs, build an invincible military, and do all things—some very ugly but necessary—required to make America a safe capitalist society in which to once again prosper.

The significant questions: How long will it be before the collapse occurs? How profound will the ensuing state of anarchy become?

For prepper planning purposes, this book assumes a state of absolute anarchy. Anyone prepared for the worst-case scenario can certainly survive anything less than that. It will be up to the survivors to reestablish the true constitutional government with limited powers by the federal government over the various states.