Charlotte Twight has written an excellent book to help Americans understand how the federal government is insidiously seizing control of their lives, year by year, edict by edict, emergency by emergency. Twight provides both a solid theoretical framework and bevies of examples to drive home the danger from Washington.
Twight, a professor of economics at Boise State University, highlights how, “from the perspective of individual liberty,” the “authority to control, not the specific controls imposed at a particular point in time,” is the key issue. Her concern is “not only the growth of dependence but also the growth of an ideology of dependence — the normative judgment that broad governmental power creating pervasive dependence on government is desirable.”
Twight shows how politicians and bureaucrats continually slant the playing field against individual freedom. Twight warns, “Deliberately manipulating our ability to stop their power quest, federal officials have used techniques that systematically increase people’s personal costs of resistance.”
Twight also shows how government grows by deception, showing how presidents, congressmen, and bureaucrats conned Americans into accepting Social Security. The Social Security Administration for decades told people that their taxes were being held in individual accounts; in reality, as soon as the money came in, politicians found ways to spend it.
Social Security Commissioner Stanford Ross conceded in 1979 that “the mythology of Social Security contributed greatly to its success… Strictly speaking, the system was never intended to return to individuals what they paid.” Ross said that Americans should forget the “myth” that Social Security is a pension plan and accept it as a tax to provide for the “vulnerable of our society.”
One of the best parts of the book is the analysis and revelations about federal surveillance ofaverage Americans. Twight drives home how the feds were already sticking their noses practically everywhere — even before Sept. 11, the Patriot Act, and Total Information Awareness.
Dependent on D.C. shows how the government has acquired far more arbitrary power in recent decades — and why that power is a dire threat to the Constitution and Americans’ everyday lives. “Having used political transaction-cost manipulation to build an institutional structure of vast governmental powers and ubiquitous dependence on government, we now await its full logical consequences,” Twight says.
James Bovard is author of Terrorism & Tyranny: How Bush’s Crusade is Sabotaging Freedom, Justice, and Peace and Lost Rights.