AMERICAN

AUTHORITARIANS
How Leftism Threatens Individual Liberty

Abstract
Modern progressive policies to increase central government control over the private
sector and economy threaten to produce an authoritarian regime. History undermines
the notion that vast government spending on its citizens’ behalf is benign. Central
control progressively confiscates economic and civil liberties from its citizens in lieu
of collective goals, and levies punishment on opponents based on their self-interest.
Americans must focus on the results of collectivist policies, and not merely on the
intentions of their architects. National debt, inflation, and reliance on public- sector
problem solving are historical precursors to government injustices. America eerily
resembles several past nations prior to their descent into oppressive regimes. America
must return to Constitutional limited governance in order to avoid the coming storm.

Jon Solomon
Jsolom100@gmail.com
703-915-1615
Table of Contents
Introduction – Setting the Stage...............................................................................................................3
Chapter 1 - From Which Side Will Oppression Emerge?........................................................................9
Chapter 2 - Collectivism vs. Individualism - The Fundamental Debate.................................................12
Chapter 3 -Communism and Susceptible Democracy............................................................................21
Chapter 4 - The Story of American Government Growth......................................................................31
Chapter 5 –Debt and Inflation: Economic Precursors to Oppressive Rule.............................................46
Chapter 6 –Leftist Violence and Marxist Revolution.............................................................................55
Chapter 7 – Is the Free Market Intrinsically Oppressive?......................................................................63
Chapter 8 - Democratic Socialism.........................................................................................................68
Chapter 9 – Equality of Opportunity Versus Equality of Outcome........................................................74
Chapter 10 - Government as Savior.......................................................................................................77
Chapter 11 – The Media, Fear, and Government Expansion.................................................................84
Chapter 12 – Leftism as a Moral Argument...........................................................................................89
Chapter 13 – American Liberals Are Not Actually Liberal...................................................................93
Chapter 14 – The Destruction of Religion and Family..........................................................................98
Chapter 15 – The Left and Free Speech...............................................................................................101
Chapter 16 – The Path Forward...........................................................................................................105
Introduction – Setting the Stage

Authoritarianism in America? Surely, I jest. Most Americans assume it impossible for the United

States to transform into an authoritarian state. After all, the American Constitution was founded upon

limited government, and the U.S. was the first modern liberal democracy established in the 18th Century.

But repeated small justifications for government control, sometimes by those in power and other times by

popular demand, have transformed the founders’ vision for limited government into a modern welfare

state. Authoritarian regimes are consistently preceded by massive government debt and inflation in

pursuit of socioeconomic solutions.1 U.S. government expenditures in 2020 and total debt are roughly

37.8% and 105% of gross domestic product (GDP), respectively; yet both were only ~8% in 1900. 2 Total

government debt has tripled since 2007, from $8 trillion to over $26 trillion in 2020. 3

Many initial signs of authoritarianism saturate American thought and life. Other signs are not just

in their infancy, but fully mature:

1. Massive national debt.

2. Inflation

3. Reliance on public rather than private sector problem-solving

4. Justification of violence and social revolution

5. Discouragement of Religion

6. Media censorship

7. Mature capitalist democracy, most vulnerable to Marxism

Why couldn’t a nation who shed its constitutional restraints to adopt massive spending and debt

convert to an authoritarian state, when the historical signs of this conversion are already in place? The

1
John T. Flynn, As We Go Marching, (Auburn: Ludwig Von Mises Institute, 2007), loc 482.
2
US National Deficit and Debt History with Charts - a www.usgovernmentspending.com
Briefing.” n.d. www.usgovernmentspending.com.
https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/debt_deficit_history.
3
https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_debt
next jump is smaller than those already taken. Citizens often focus on the personal histories of the heroes

of authoritarianism, instead of the factors in their respective societies which made their rise possible. 4 The

slow-growing climates of oppressive regimes are not newsworthy and are often cloaked in benevolent

government acts to the working class.5 The seeds of authoritarianism and fascism are often laid by well-

intentioned citizens who choose government intervention as the preferred tool to fix their nation’s

socioeconomic problems. As John Flynn says in As We Go Marching,

“The most terrifying aspect of the whole fascist episode is the dark fact that most of its

poisons are generated not by evil men or evil peoples, but by quite ordinary men in

search of an answer to the baffling problems that beset every society...The gangster

comes upon the stage only when the scene has been made ready for him by his

blundering precursors.”6

If Germany, an advanced European nation in the 18th and19th Centuries - the nation of Beethoven

and Schiller and Mozart and Heine - can descend into fascism due to government debt and central

economic control, no nation is immune to oppressive regimes. 7

The current overreach of government power is not only ignored by Americans, but often

applauded by them, ignorant of, or apathetic to its dangers. A 2018 study found that 46% of millennials

preferred Socialism as an economic system, compared to just 40% for Capitalism. 8 A 2019 Harvard-

Harris poll found 56% of those 18-24yr favored a “mostly socialist” system. 9 Those aware of the history

of authoritarian regimes repeatedly fail to heed the warnings of previous nations. They believe current

4
Flynn, As We Go Marching, loc 1517
5
Ibid, loc 1517
6
Ibid, loc 1484.
7
F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents, ed. August Von and Bruce Caldwell
(Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2007), 193.
8
Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, 2018 Annual Report (Washington, DC, 2018), 15.
9
Max Greenwood, “64 percent say Democratic Party Supports Socialism, Says Poll,” 26 Feb 2019.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/431641-64-percent-say-democratic-party-supports-socialism-
says-poll
conditions of government growth are different - the good intentions of those in power, the advanced

technologies guarding against past catastrophes, and the greater knowledge of socioeconomic and

political systems than in decades past. But the dangers are real, and many oppressive regimes have

demonstrated the ability to function in the modern era.

There is nothing more dangerous to freedom and liberty than large centralized government.

Leftists have historically blamed religion for unspeakable death and the worst social injustices. They

conveniently ignore estimates that strong, centralized governments were responsible for the deaths of

over 100 million people in the 20th Century alone.10 Even if the true number is half that, the number is

still staggering. As Milton Friedman famously said, “Social injustices are clearly the greatest where you

have central control.”11

I did not write this book to comment on the policies of the current Trump Administration. My

goal is also not to provide an exhaustive discussion on every issue discussed herein. My goal is to educate

readers on economics and political history, pulling from many brilliant minds that few contemporary

Americans read today. My goal is also to start a social dialogue and awaken Americans to the real

potential of authoritarianism in the not-so-distant future. The progression from capitalist democracy to big

government, socialism and authoritarianism is a predictable process. 12 According to Karl Marx, capitalist

democracy is even a necessary step toward socialism.13 Because of society’s natural economic structure,

the lower classes who believe they have the most to gain from socialism, will always outnumber those

who might fight this trend.14 This danger is increased in modern democracies where each member of the

10
R.J Rummel, Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900 (Charlottesville: Center
for National Security Law, University of Virginia, 1997)
David Satter, “100 Years of Communism – and 100 Million Dead,” Wall Street Journal 2017 Nov 6.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/100-years-of-communismand-100-million-dead-1510011810
11
Milton Friedman, “Is Capitalism Humane?” (Free to Choose Network, 27 September 1977)
12
Ludwig von Mises, Socialism (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981), 499.
Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (Floyd: Wilder Publications, 2018), 13.
13
Von Mises, Socialism, 499.
Thomas Sowell, Marxism: Philosophy and Economics (New York: Routledge, 1985), 72, 208.
14
Sowell, Marxism, 72.
larger proletariat has equal voting rights as the members of the Bourgeois. 15 U.S. government spending

has consistently risen since 1900, now standing at 37.8% of its GDP. 16 This has risen from 8% in 1929,

15% in 1941, 25% in 1965 and 35% in 2009. In 1956, non-defense spending was 12% of national income.

42 years later, non-defense spending had increased to 30% of national income. 17

America began this aggressive increase in government spending at the turn of the 20th Century

when its total government spending stood at merely 8% of national GDP. Spending increased

dramatically during World War I, following the inception of permanent income tax and The Federal

Reserve in 1913. Spending grew in the 1920s and 1930s due to the Federal Reserve's newfound ability to

expand the money supply, and the government’s newfound ability to create revenue though taxes.

Government size increased dramatically in the 1930s and 1940s when FDR enacted the New Deal as his

remedy to the Great Depression. Our government has grown steadily since then, not only in its spending

and outstanding debt, but also in its centralized control over American life and economy.

Today, the nation’s 330 million inhabitants are fractured by two basic mindsets - limit

government power to protect freedom or expand it to meet socioeconomic needs. The U.S. government is

larger than ever before, and closer to authoritarian control than ever before.

While the COVID-19 Pandemic led to significant increases in government power over freedom of

assembly and commerce, the ANTIFA/Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests of 2020 stimulated new

demands from the left which would increase government spending to a level never seen before.

Progressives are honest and insistent on their desire to dismantle the current American political and

economic system by using increased government force to more equally distribute material wealth. The

calls from BLM leaders, progressives in Congress, and many private citizens to overhaul what remains of

America’s free market system demands education on this issue. These revolutionaries, as well as the

average American whose support they will need, do not have the economic or historical knowledge to

15
Sowell, Marxism, 159.
16
“General Government Spending,” https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-spending.htm
17
Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), viii.
know what they ask for. Their claim that the U.S. system is oppressive pulls on the heartstrings of a

sympathetic American people, but doesn’t accurately portray where America stands in the annals of

historically oppressive regimes; nor do they accurately depict the realities of the centrally-planned

economies they wish to establish. America has designed an economic and political system freer than any

nation in the history of the world, enabling the poor to rise to the upper classes through hard work and

innovation. Leftists distort classical Liberalism and ignore historical examples demonstrating why limited

government is so critical to political and economic freedom. They do not understand that eroding the

former would reduce the latter two rather than increase them.

Upon finishing this book, honest readers will likely acknowledge that the groundwork for an

oppressive regime has been laid in America. This “road to serfdom,” as FA Hayek put it, has an easily

identifiable pattern: (1) socioeconomic challenges stimulate government economic intervention; (2) this

intervention obstructs market forces to intensify economic crises; (3) government control increases to

ensure security, stability, and equality. Historically, from this point forward (4) government spending,

debt and inflation grow; (5) civil liberties are increasingly confiscated for the collective good; (6)

government buys up private enterprise to create income and alleviate debt; and (7) those that oppose the

party expanding government are oppressed. An economic collapse from debt and inflation is also likely. I

am skeptical any meaningful change to America’s current course can occur. A moving train is difficult to

stop. It would take remarkable bravery from millions of Americans and government representatives who I

believe lack these capacities.

As AV Dicey once said, “The beneficial effect of state intervention, especially in the form of

legislation, is direct, immediate, and so to speak, visible, whilst its evil effects are gradual and indirect,

and lie out of sight.”18 This book was written to bring these evils to light.

18
A.V. Dicey, Law and Public Opinion in England (2d ed., London: Macmillan, 1914), 257-258.