Published January 26 in the Record
Real war pits power against liberty
Regarding Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin’s “Looking to Lincoln on this second inaugural” (Other Views, Jan. 21):
Doblin is right in his original premise: “America is at war” at home. Unfortunately, Doblin makes the understandable error that the country’s primary conflict is about the conservative red states versus the liberal blue states.
Politically, there is a red/blue divide, conflict in America, no question about it. But the real divide in America is about the proponents of the welfare-warfare state (which both conservatives and liberals support) and the proponents of a free society — that is based on free enterprise, not crony capitalism; honest financial institutions, not the Social Security and Medicare Ponzi schemes; civil liberties, not the anti-Bill of Rights Patriot Act and the counterproductive war on drugs; a non-interventionist foreign policy, not one of invading nations that have not threatened us and meddling in every corner of the globe; and honest money, not the fiat Federal Reserve dollar.
In the United States, we are witnessing another skirmish in the epic battle that has played out time and again in recorded human history: power versus liberty. The forces of an all-encompassing central government have the upper hand now, as they did in the Soviet Union for a good part of the 20th century. But the American welfare-warfare state’s days are numbered, just as the Soviet empire was in peril even before it collapsed before our very eyes more than two decades ago.
Murray Sabrin
Fort Lee, Jan. 21
The writer, a professor of finance at Ramapo College of New Jersey, has been a candidate for state office as both a Republican and libertarian.