 I want to join with Lou Rockwell and welcoming all of you to the Miesd Institute conference on the cost of war. Lou and I first began to discuss this subject probably almost two years ago, and since then Lou has worked very hard and has assembled a truly outstanding group of speakers and scholars to address a subject which is extremely timely and important to American freedom. During the Persian Gulf War, President Bush announced that we were approaching the New World Order. It is becoming clear that part of what is meant by that is that America is to become a permanent garrison state and also the world policeman, sometimes under the cloak and command of the United Nations and sometimes NATO or some other regional alliance. War could be a war constantly without a declaration of war by Congress. And if this New World Order is fully realized, American sovereignty will be destroyed. The historian Charles Baird warned us that this would mean perpetual war for perpetual peace. And of course this is the theme of George Orwell's prophetic novel in 1984. So we need to understand the total cost of war in order to appreciate the dangers that war in general, but the New World Order in particular, posed from individual liberty. One of my favorite writers is Albert J. Knott, who was a great individualist and a classical liberal. And he wrote, oh you might say a liberal in the classical sense. He wrote an essay entitled Isaiah's Job. In this he tells a story of the biblical prophet Isaiah who was instructed not to try to convert the masses, but to try to speak to the remnant, defined as that small group of people who would understand and appreciate his message and would be there to put things back together when the time was right. Knott wrote to and for that remnant, which he recognized as being a small group of people who were interested in preserving liberty in America and were working towards that end. This conference I think brings together a part of that remnant, which has been working to keep the torch of liberty lit since the chaos of World War I, ushered classical liberalism or the philosophy of freedom off-center stage and out of the theater. Collectivism in various forms has taken its place. This philosophy I define as classical liberalism Ralph Rayco calls it the signature political philosophy of western civilization. An important part of the remnant has preserved much of this philosophy under various labels including the old right, paleoconservatism and libertarianism. Non-interventionism has always been the cornerstone of classical liberalism and the remnant. Knott recognized that American citizens had far more to fear from the rapidly increasing powers of our own central government than from any threat of a foreign invasion. He further recognized that it is through the war powers granted to the president that our freedom is primarily jeopardized. Knott addressed the subject of the total cost of war by stating, I am coming to be much less interested in what war does to people at the time of the war and much more in what it does to them after it is over. Of course the starting point in understanding the total cost of war is the well-known axiom that when war is declared truth is the first casualty. History shows us that even in a just war fought to oppose the clear and present danger to life, liberty and property still causes a severe loss of freedom. Even in a successful war the result is one step being put forward to defend freedom and then two step backwards to centralize the government to raise taxes in order to fight the war. This net deficit must be made up after the war in order to have a net gain for freedom. How many times do we see taxes raised? Governmental powers increased and then centralized for the purpose of war and then when peace arrives there's no real relinquishment of those burdens on freedom. Pollard in his book The Lost Cause states that war is like that cave of bones and carcasses in mythology into which led many tracks and out of it none. On the other hand we're told by the court historians and many political leaders that war is simply an instrument of progress that is similar to the purpose of a summer thunderstorm which clears and clues the air. Those who love freedom must never cease to challenge that idea. Led by Mises opposed the unjust war but he was no pacifist. This conference is not truly an anti-war rally. There are just wars rightfully fought for honorable purposes of protecting our families, our lives, our liberty and property. For instance I think that in this room today there would be a consensus that the American Revolution was such a war fought for the right purposes. Nor should this conference be construed as an attack upon any American soldier or any soldier for that matter. One of the great injustices of the Vietnam war was that the abuse was heaped upon the returning veterans rather than criticism being directed to the politicians who caused that war. America's only military defeat. While I consider World War I the greatest tragedy of the 20th century. In no way do I condemn my father who fought for the American forces in France. Nor Led by Mises who fought on the opposing side for Austria on the Russian front. These two men remained two of my heroes and I admire the individual courage they demonstrated in those wars. Nor should this conference be understood to advocate isolationism. That pejorative term used by the Roosevelt administration to condemn its critics. In fact one of the arguments made by Mises in advocating a non-interventionist foreign policy is that no nation is entirely self-sufficient and because of the division of labor and the scarcity of resources we must have world trade and war is its greatest enemy. The great writer of the Revolutionary War period Thomas Paine gave a similar economic reason when he stated quote. War can never be in the interest of a trading nation. Any more than quarreling can be in the interest of man and business. But to make war on those who trade with us is like setting a bulldog upon a customer in the shop door end quote. This conference is rather a reaffirmation of the original and historically unique premises upon which America was found. Thomas Jefferson in his first inaugural address succinctly restated the American foreign policy first outlined by the farewell address of George Washington. Jefferson stated peace, commerce, honest friendship with all nations entangling alliances with none. This conference is also a reaffirmation of Ludwig von Mises philosophy which he stated clearly in 1927 in his book entitled Liberalism where he advocated a non-interventionist foreign policy with trade and friendship with all nations. Today as we stand at the end of the 20th century in America we can look back and see that it has been a century of constant assault on individual freedom, a century of big government and collectivism under various labels including communism, Nazism, fascism, socialism, and the New Deal. It is the war and welfare century. Now we finally reach the end of the Cold War between the two great superpowers, the Soviet Empire and America, a war which lasted 45 years. Mises had predicted soon after communism took over Russia during World War One that it would eventually collapse without market prices with which to calculate supply and demand. This final collapse of the Soviet Empire leaves America as a staggering giant weighed down by excessive government, excuse me, taxes have been drastically raised and America has become the world policeman sending her sons and daughters to police the Persian Gulf by charging rent for that army from other countries. We've sent our young people to Somalia and Africa as an armed welfare agency. America's armed forces have been stationed in Europe since the end of World War Two and have become part now of a United Nations and NATO police force in Bosnia. What has become of America in the 20th century? Let me quote to you the words of the great English historian Arnold Toyme, reported in the New York Times on May 7, 1971, as follows. Quote, to most Europeans, I guess, America now looks like the most dangerous country in the world. Since America is unquestionably the most powerful country, the transformation of America's image within the last 30 years is very frightening for Europeans. It is probably still more frightening for the great majority of human race who are neither Europeans nor North Americans, but are Latin Americans, Asians, and Africans. They, I imagine, feel even more insecure than we feel. They feel at any moment America may intervene in their internal affairs with the same appalling consequences as followed from the American intervention in Southeast Asia. For the world as a whole, the CIA has become the bogeyman that communism has been for America. Wherever there is trouble, violence, or suffering, or tragedy, the rest of us are now quick to suspect that the CIA had a hand in it. Our phobia about the CIA is, no doubt, as fantastically excessive as America's a phobia about world communism. But in this case, too, there is just enough convincing guidance to make the phobia genuine. In fact, the roles of America and Russia have been reversed in the world's eyes. Today, America has become the nightmare, end quote. This conference will address the question of how American foreign policy has been transformed and the dangerous present status poses to our freedom. We need to revisit brief of our original principles of foreign policy. I've already alluded to the non-interventionist foreign policy statements of presidents Washington and Jefferson. Listen to John Quincy Adams quote, America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She's the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause by the countenance of her voice and by the benign sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under the banners of others than her own, whether even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication in all the wars of interest and intrigue of individual average envy, ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom. The fundamental maximum of her policy insensibly would change from liberty to force, end quote. Of course, before he became president, he served as Secretary of State to President Monroe and thereby played the major role in forming the Monroe Doctrine. This doctrine told Europe and Asia alike to stay out of our hemisphere, and we in turn would stay out of theirs. President James Madison explained why a non-interventionist policy was necessary in order to preserve freedom in America at home. And he addressed the cost of war with the following statement, quote, of all the enemies to public liberty. War is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies. And from these parents of armies, from these precede debts and taxes. And armies and debts and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few, end quote. Finally, toward the end of the old republic in America in 1852, Henry Clay stated, quote, by following the policy we have adhered to since the days of Washington, we've prospered beyond precedent. We've done more for the cause of liberty in the world than arms could effect. We have shown to other nations the way to greatness and happiness. But if we should involve ourselves in the web of European politics in a war which could affect nothing, where then would be left the last hope of the friends of freedom throughout the world? Far better it is that adhering to our wise Pacific system and avoiding the distant wars of Europe, we should keep our own lamp burning brightly on this Western shore. And as a light to all nations, then to hazard its utter extinction amidst the ruins of fallen or falling republics in Europe. Our founding fathers understood the non-interventionist foreign policy to be a lesson learned by history. And it was a lesson to preserve individual freedom at home. They were familiar, of course, with the first historian Herodotus, who wrote about the Persian armies invading Greece. And he marveled at the heroic efforts of the Greeks, who were outnumbered by a ratio of 10 to 1, but still defeated the invaders, while at the same time they resisted any impulse toward empire themselves. He was repulsed by the arrogance of the Persian leader Xerxes who conducted these imperialistic wars. The founders of America were also familiar with the great historian Thucydides, who was a warrior himself. And he tells about the famous Peloponnesian wars, which destroyed the great Greek civilization. He teaches us the lesson that the love of freedom and justice by the Athenians could not survive their continual warfare with Sparta. He shows that the Athenians, through their new founding imperialistic tendencies, became as cruel and arrogant and tyrannical as had been the invading Persians or their Grecian enemy Sparta. He talked that through the constant wars, Athens lost her soul. He points out that the turning point of the Peloponnesian wars was the destruction of the great Athenian navy, which at the time was not defending Athens, but was lost in the harbor of Syracuse while trying to conquer Sicily. These and many other lessons of history were known and understood by our founding fathers who set out our original policy. Now let's look at what happened briefly when we abandoned those principles. This conference will look at the cost of war with special emphasis to be given to three wars, all one by America. These were the American Civil War, which, more correctly, labeled would be the War for Southern Independence. Ahem. Yes. Yes. Here it is. Then the Spanish-American War, and finally World War I. The combination of these three wars repudiated many of the most important principles upon which America was founded. It changed the structure of the American government. And for purposes of this conference, more importantly, it changed the direction of our foreign policy by 180 degrees. The destruction of the South both politically and economically during the Civil War also abolished the ideas of Jefferson of maintaining a decentralized federal government and instead allowed the centralizing ideas of Hamilton to take over. The South, with its minority political position, had attempted to restrain centralization of power into the federal government by forming an alliance with the Northern Democrats and by asserting the theories of states' rights, nullification, and concurrent majority. The South, however, became a tax slave to the North through the Protective Tariff, which was extracted from the South and then used for internal improvements in the North, all under the General Welfare Clause of the Constitution and all over the protests of the South. The great historian and advocate of liberty, Lord Acton, was a strong supporter of the Confederate cause because he saw the issues from a long historical perspective. He saw that the South represented the preservation of the original purposes of the Constitution, which basically was to promote liberty by preventing the centralization of government into the federal government. Acton was no defender of slavery, and he lamented the compromise that was reached with slavery in the Constitution. But he saw slavery in the context of a historical, religious, and ethical development, an institution rooted in ideas and circumstances only of a particular era in time. Lord Acton apparently had convinced William Gladstone that England should intervene to support the Confederates. But this intervention was cut off by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, made long after the war began. Lincoln's statement, which purported only to free slaves in the rebelling states and not throughout the rest of America, was made admittedly by Lincoln for military and propaganda purposes. The proclamation had the effect, however, of diverting the war from its original and stated purpose of preserving the union to that of eliminating slavery. Acton wrote to General Lee at Appomattox, after Appomattox and stated, quote, therefore I believe that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization. And I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond, more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo. The writer, Gore Vidal, in his study of the American Civil War and of Lincoln in particular, concluded that Lincoln was America's first dictator. He stated, quote, the memory of Lincoln was and is a constant stimulus to the ambitious chief magistrate and knows that once the nation is at war, his powers are truly unlimited, while the possibilities of personal glory are immeasurable, end quote. Secretary of State William Henry Seward and Lincoln's top military advisor, General Winfield Scott, both strongly advised the president to abandon Fort Sumpton rather than reinforce the federal troops in Charleston Harbor. He was advised that such reinforcement would serve no military purpose and would be a useless act that would probably provoke an unnecessary war. Lincoln's act of reinforcing Fort Sumpton and thereby provoking the South into firing the first shot, set an example for later presidents to follow such as Wilson in concerning the events surrounding the sinking of the Lusitania, as well as Roosevelt, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Others have labeled Lincoln as America's Robespierre, not primarily for the conduct of the war towards the South, but rather for his unconstitutional and tyrannical treatment of American citizens in the North. Lincoln's repressive policy in the North was made a crucial issue in the 1864 presidential election in areas far removed from the war zone, such as in New York, where the court system was fully operable. Lincoln allowed martial law to be declared and American citizens to be arrested without warrants, tried before military judges, without a jury or without counsel, and convicted in sentence without an appeal, some merely upon suspicion of disloyalty to his cause. He also unconstitutionally suspended the writ of habeas courts, a time on a basic right of Anglo-American history. In a recent book entitled The Fate of Liberty by Mark Neely, who by the way is the director of the Lincoln Museum, he discloses a full state of the question of civil liberties at the hands of President Lincoln. Neely carefully reviewed the records of some 13,000 of these unconstitutional trials and concludes that while he is unable to refute Gore-Vidal's charges, nevertheless he concludes that Lincoln should and will be absolved from blame by history because the ends justified the means. However, he concludes his book with this final and true statement, quote, war and its effect upon civil liberties remain a frightening unknown. With the destruction of the political ideas of the South, the American government lost both its restraining anchor and its stabilizing rudder and set sails with the winds of centralization of power. And finally, after three decades, shipwrecked at the beginning of the 20th century on the rocky shoals of big government. The war and welfare century was about to begin. The Spanish-American war at the turn of the century in 1898 was labeled by John Hay as that splendid little war. Although the cost in lives and taxes was relatively small, it was the war that repudiated our non-interventionist foreign policy, which had served America well for over 100 years. That war with Spain was completely unnecessary is shown by the fact that Spain agreed to all of the terms proposed by America for settlement of the issues two days before President McKinney delivered his war dress to kindness. A small detail he failed to disclose. The war gave America its first taste of an imperialistic world power and gave America a foothold in Asia, in the Philippines, thereby violating its own Monroe Dock. Have a Mark Twain at the time saw that the full significance of this drastic change in policy and recognized the ominous threat to freedom when he said, quote, we cannot maintain an empire in the Orient and maintain a republic in America. The break in the dyke of American foreign policy on non-interventionism became a flood with the World War I by engaging in the European cauldron of constant conflict. The entangling alliances of the European nations served as tripwires to cause one single assassination to erupt into a world war, thereby demonstrating the wisdom of the founding fathers to avoid such alliances. America's unnecessary and late entry in the World War I completely upset the balance of power in Europe and caused a Carthaginian peace treaty at Versailles. This unjust peace treaty forced upon Germany played an important role in bringing about the next world war. To quote Albert J. Nock again, he stated, quote, World War I immensely fortified a universal faith in violence. It set in motion endless adventures and imperialism, endless nationalistic ambition. Every war does this to some degree roughly corresponding to its magnitude. The final settlement of Versailles, therefore, was a mere scramble for loot. And a book by an English attorney, Frederick J.P. Veal, he traces the history of warfare and shows that the quote civilized code for war was completely abandoned in World War I. Veal traces the optimistic faith of Western civilization during the 19th century where it appeared that the Industrial Revolution and the outstanding achievements in science and technology would bring unlimited progress to the world. This optimistic dream was shattered when Western civilization leaped into total warfare in World War I with all of its new scientific weapons of mass destruction. Veal entitles his book, Advanced to Barbarism. When we look at the rampant violence in America today, we are, I believe, also looking at part of the cost of war. Think it is instructive to remember that near the end of World War II and six months before the atom bombs were dropped on two Japanese cities, that the Japanese government had offered to surrender on virtually identical terms, which were accepted one month after the bombing. The surrender terms were documented in a 40-page memorandum from General McAuliffe to FDR, dated January 20, 1945. The memo was then secretly delivered later by Chief of Staff Admiral Leahy to journalist Walter Trohan of the Chicago Tribune because the Admiral rightly suspected that the peace officer would be ignored and he wanted history to record the truth. Furthermore, President Truman later admitted to former President Herbert Hoover that by early May, 1945, he was aware of the peace officer and that further fighting was unnecessary and yet he still authorized the bombing. Trohan first published this information in the Chicago Tribune on August, 1919, 1945 and Harry Elmer Barnes revealed more about this horrible story in national review on May 10, 1958. Just like Churchill's bombing of Dresden, this massive destruction and wholesale slaughter of innocent men, women and children was not a military necessity. It can be little doubt that this dreadful violence committed by the American government has had an adverse impact upon our culture as well as the standard of morality for all mankind. America thus has forfeited its original claim to serve as a beacon for justice and peace to the world. We've now had over 100 years of experience with our original non-interventionist foreign policy and nearly 100 years of experience with our present policy. I believe that the empirical evidence clearly shows which policies should be adopted for the future. Let me close by reminding you of a speech led me by Mises, gave at Princeton University in 1958, which is now in a pamphlet entitled Liberty and Property published by the Mises Institute I noticed on the shelf in the back. He said that time that the main beneficiaries of a true free market or the consumers of a general population rather than businessmen and that the general population, consumers, rather than businessmen should be its champion. He pointed out that many powerful business interests oppose the free market and prefer a government regulated market where they can avoid competition and are able to charge excessive prices and reap massive profits through their political influence. Well, I think the same is true in regard to the issues of war and peace. It is the general population who lose their lives, their wealth, their property and their liberty and pay the total cost of war. I think that history also proves that certain powerful economic interests or the merchants of death promote and support wars in general in order to gain unjust and immense profits that they could not obtain through a true free market. The roll call of those who oppose the free market as well as those who oppose peace often contain the same names. In a rare moment of Canada for modern American presidents, General Eisenhower in a farewell address lifted the curtain of deception slightly and warned us about the military industrial complex. While this conference is a gathering of part of Knox-Rimlin, our ultimate purpose is to eventually reach the general population who benefit the most from peace and you pay almost the total cost of war. And it is only when those total costs of war are fully and widely understood that liberty can be safely protected. Thank you.