Meet Your Enemy

by Joseph Sobran

It has now been 59 years since the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and the
debate continues: Did Franklin Roosevelt know of the attack in advance and
deliberately refrain from informing the American commanders in Hawaii?

The controversy has been renewed by Robert B. Stinnett's recent book, Day
of Deceit, which argues that Roosevelt did know and did withhold the
information for the purpose of allowing the United States to be drawn into
the war the great majority of Americans passionately wanted to stay out of.
The interesting thing is that Stinnett thinks Roosevelt was justified in doing
this, on grounds that only the United States could prevent a German victory
in the war and had a duty to do so.

Critics retort that Stinnett hasn't fully proved his case. Roosevelt did try to
provoke the Germans and Japanese into some military strike that would
inflame American opinion and lead to war, they agree, but he didn't
necessarily know that Pearl Harbor would be the site of the crucial incident.
Besides, he couldn't have known that Adolf Hitler would be foolish enough to
declare war on the United States a few days later, thereby giving Roosevelt
license to enter the war in Europe.

What nobody now disputes is that Roosevelt lied to the American public for
two years when he continually insisted that he was trying to keep America
out of the war. He was secretly scheming with Winston Churchill for precisely
the opposite purpose, and he told his advisor Harry Hopkins that he could be
impeached if the extent of his illegal aid to the British were discovered.
Roosevelt knew very well what he was doing.

Apart from being diabolically treacherous, keeping the people in the dark
about the fateful decision to go to war is the antithesis of everything
democracy is supposed to be. Like most demagogues, Roosevelt flattered the
people and pandered to them while holding them in profound contempt.
Those who defend him are forced to defend lies that are no longer deniable.

The alleged "lesson of Pearl Harbor" is that we must always be ready for
war. But the real lesson is broader: your own government is your natural
enemy. Those in power can't be trusted. They will take your money, your
freedom, and if necessary your life.

That's why we have constitutional safeguards, dividing power to prevent the
sort of one-man rule Roosevelt, like Hitler, Stalin, and so many others,
aspired to. One of the evils of monarchy, as opposed to the republican form of
government envisioned by the Framers of the U.S. Constitution, was that a
king could, by his own arbitrary will, plunge his nation into war. Roosevelt
saw the Constitution purely as an obstacle to be surmounted.

But the wars of the old kings were minor skirmishes compared with the total
wars waged by modern rulers who don't call themselves kings. Men like
Stalin and Roosevelt didn't wear jeweled crowns and ermine robes; they
styled themselves "men of the people." But they were far deadlier than any
George III or Ivan the Terrible.

Over two centuries our rulers have learned to outflank, ignore, or destroy
many of the limits on their power. They pose a greater threat to us than the
foreign countries and "terrorists" they warn us against and claim to protect
us from. It's not a hypothetical threat, either: by expanding the taxing power
and debasing money, they have made government a system of organized
plunder.

The most successful terrorist organizations on earth are government tax
agencies, which are called revenue "services." When the government gives
things names, you should keep your sense of irony handy. These "services"
serve only the state; they control the rest of us by force and fear.

There are many evil governments around the world, but they are chiefly the
enemies of their own subjects. By the same token, our own enemies are not
in Baghdad or Tehran or Peking, but in Washington. That is where the
immediate peril to our freedom resides. Saddam Hussein may be a beast, but
you aren't forced to work for him five months of every year.

Fifty-nine years ago the real enemy of the American people was not Hitler or
Hirohito. It was the man they had elected to a third term as their president.

December 23, 2000

Joe Sobran, who Pat Buchanan says is "perhaps the finest
columnist of our generation" and Lew Rockwell calls "a
national treasure," has his columns nationally syndicated by
the Griffin Internet Syndicate. He also writes "Washington
Watch" for The Wanderer, a weekly Catholic newspaper.

Mr. Sobran is the author of the book Single Issues: Essays on
the Crucial Social Questions. His book on the Shakespeare authorship
question is Alias Shakespeare. He is currently writing a book on the
abandonment of the Constitution.

Mr. Sobran, a lecturer and speaker who appears frequently on major talk
shows and at conferences throughout the world, also edits SOBRAN'S, a
monthly newsletter of his essays and columns.

Get a free copy of Sobran’s latest book, Hustler: The Clinton Legacy, by
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Reprinted with permission from SOBRAN’S. Copyright © 2000. All rights reserved.
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