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How Un-Warlike

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It’s war!

A common refrain regarding the coronavirus. “This is our World War II,” say media mavens and politicians . . . who have never had to endure anything like World War II.

The utter vapidity of the “war” response was explained very well by Peter Schiff on a recent episode of The Tom Woods Show. Schiff is famously bearish on the American economy, which he has argued for years is addicted to debt and consumption but not production and responsibility. He notes how different this new “war” is. 

Folks today, he argues, have no more idea how World War II was won than how the economy works.

  1. Politicians increased taxes during the war.
  2. Americans were not bailed out: they had to struggle to survive, even on the home front, as
  3. they had to do without creature comforts. Taxes on goods and services sky-rocketed, to pay for the war . . .
  4. in which many young men died.
  5. Middle-class wealth was tapped like never before, to win the two-front war, and one mechanism to aid the effort was the withholding tax . . .

which now we are talking about suspending.

What is widely being proposed today is not the “socialism” of war, where lives and wealth are conscripted.* What is being proposed is the “socialism” of bailouts and sugar-plum fairies, where consumers are coddled.

And unlike in World War II, Schiff contends, there is no vast private wealth to tax to pay for what is deemed necessary. Instead, we have debt. 

It is indeed a strange war where we fight the threat of any harm coming to us, or any sacrifice required.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


* We should oppose the conscription of individuals, as was done in the First and Second World War as well as Korea and Vietnam. Not only does it violate the Thirteenth Amendment’s prohibition against involuntary servitude, it was not needed then, nor is it now. More on this later in the week.

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From a photo by Nick M

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2 replies on “How Un-Warlike”

A little perspective …

The 1918 Flu epidemic killed 675,000 Americans, When you consider the US population in 1918 was about 1/3 our current population that would be the equivalent to nearly three million!
the country took measures similar to those being taken today, but didn’t panic.
Swine flu (From China) affected 60 million Americans and killed 12,500, the country didn’t panic. The Media actually took efforts to downplay that outbreak under Obama’s presidency.
Bird flu (From China) was mild by comparison, despite constant warnings of “pandemic”, the country didn’t panic.
Hong Kong flu (From China) killed 2,000 Americans, the country didn’t panic.
MERS (courtesy on the Middle East) was another virus that was supposed to be a pandemic, but actually ended up causing deaths in the hundreds. There was no panic.
Last year’s seasonal flu (a particularly bad year) killed 80,000 Americans, the country didn’t panic. It was “ho hum” business as usual.
This year’s seasonal flu has killed 17,000 Americans -thus far-, the country hasn’t even paid attention.
So, what’s the difference with Covid-19 this year?
In all previous instances the media and Democrats had no need to unite in a concerted effort to destroy Trump.

One difference is that people know what ‘seasonal flu’ is. They know what to expect. So of course we go about our business. This coronavirus is new – never seen before. It looks like it’s manageable but that doesn’t mean it is. It’s too early to know for sure. Of course the media doesn’t help with its chicken little reporting.

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