Murray Rothbard recounts how during the French and Indian War (1754-1763), Americans continued the great tradiÂtion of trading with the enemy, and even more readily than before. The British attempted to enlist them but Americans just wouldn’t go along. And this was hardly the only way in which the Americans disobeyed authority. They favor neutrality, were “bad” soldiers, and otherwise “unpatriotic” in every way, prefering their liberty over the government’s wars of conquest. [Full Article from Conceived in Liberty, now 20% off].
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/3907/trading-with-the-enemy-an-american-tradition/
Trading with the Enemy: An American Tradition
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It just goes to show how far we have come, scarcely a day goes by without calls for ‘country’ and how ‘our boys’ are ‘doing it for us’ (rather than for college tuition or whatnot).
I guess a lot of American traditions have been thrown out the window over the course of the last 100 years. Now we can’t trade with all sorts of people who aren’t even enemies. Where Americans used to trade with people whom they were at war with, now they can’t even conduct certain consensual transactions among themselves during peace time. This also applies to the U.S. government’s use of peace time sanctions.
“In Philadelphia, pacifist mobs repeatedly attacked recruiting officers and even lynched one in February 1756.”
Wait a second, what? Pacifist mobs attacking people? I don’t know if “pacifist” is the right word here. They were certainly right in their forceful resistance against British force, but forceful resistance and pacifism are antithetical.
“The individualistic Rhode Islanders angrily turned Governor Stephen Hopkins out of office for embroiling Rhode Island in a “foreign” war between England and France.”
Wow! Can you imagine that? What an age to live in. If attitudes like that could exist only 250 years ago, then there’s hope, i think.
How about this for a headline of the future: “Insurance/Legal firm goes broke from loss of business because its CEO suggested the state take over and monopolize police and law industry.”
“Smuggling and trading with the enemy were not the only forms of American resistance to British dictation during the French and Indian War. During the French wars of the 1740s, Boston had been the center of violent resistance to conscription for the war effort, an effort that decimated the Massachusetts male population. During the French and Indian War, Massachusetts continued as the most active center of resistance to conscription and of widespread desertion, often en masse, from the militia.”
The people of the US have a very proud and inspiring anti-war and anti-conscription heritage. Too bad this history has been stolen from the poor souls in the US public schools. Does it now not seem painfully apparent that the bill of rights should have enumerated that the general government shall have no right or ability to educate the children in any way? What a flaw that the state has been left to meddle in education. We might have held on to some vestiges of liberty a little longer had that blight been held off.
Hooray for the citizens and militia of Colonial Massachusetts! Those with whom they traded and against whom they were conscripted could have easily been considered someone else’s enemy.
For accounts of trading with our enemies during WWII and Viet Nam, I recommend reading Trading With The Enemy, by Charles Higham, The Seven Sisters by Anthony Sampson and Our Own Worst Enemy by William J. Lederer.
It seems commerce has no enemy other than competent competition.
If you wish to become nauseous, try reading another of Mr. Sampson’s books: The Arms Bazaar – From Lebanon to Lockheed.
The above is written in the firm conviction that without coercive input from those who expected to profit from war, the US could have been without war for at least the past 150 years.
“The above is written in the firm conviction that without coercive input from those who expected to profit from war, the US could have been without war for at least the past 150 years.”
No way. WW2 would certainly have hit us sooner or later. When there are regimes bent on global conquest, if nobody else stops them then eventually it’ll be your turn to fight. Who would have stopped Germany? The Russians did, but only with our help in the design and development of manufacturing techniques of the T-34. If we had sat on our thumbs while Germany finished off Great Britain and Russia, we quite likely would have lost.
We could have avoided a great many wars by doing things differently, but saying that we could have avoided all of them for the last 150 years is foolishness. Sometimes wars come to you.
I follow Mr. Rothbard’s desire to undermine government by trading with the enemy. America traded with Germany and Japan prior to WWII, and got back what we gave them in the form of bullets and bombs. Now we can do better by giving the enemy atomic weapons and delivery systems. If you believe that our government is the real enemy, don’t stop with armamants. Why not sell all of our military secrets, when surely countries will pay well for them?
Ryan Fuller: “If we had sat on our thumbs while Germany finished off Great Britain and Russia, we quite likely would have lost.”
It’s hard to say. It may well be that without US help neither Germany nor Russia would have emerged as victor and the war would have turned into stalemate. Not a bad outcome, actually.
Hi Ryan: I think that most Americans were raised to believe just as you are stating, that “WW2 would certainly have hit us sooner or later. When there are regimes bent on global conquest, if nobody else stops them then eventually it’ll be your turn to fight. Who would have stopped Germany?” This is classic propaganda that we all absorbed uncritically throughout our childhood.
I admit, it isn’t easy to dismiss twenty years of brainwashing with a few minutes of reasoned analysis. But this is the beauty of mises.org. It least we have a running chance at it.
Here are a few assertions i’ll make, without writing a book to support them:
1. Britain would have defended themselves successfully from Germany on their own. They would have had to bring their forces back to defend themselves, rather than have them scattered about the globe (the sun never sets on the British Empire).
2. Germany would not have beaten both Britain and Russia together. Attacking Russia was the end of Germany. There is some myth that Germany was some massive super military power. They were pretty well broke. A little insanity and desperation took them a ways along, but it would not provide the resources needed for world domination by a long stretch.
3. If Germany had somehow overtaken Russia, does someone contend that Nazi Germany was actually worse than Soviet Russia? Who murdered more civilians, Hitler or Stalin (“OUR” ally)?
4. After spending so much of their resources and lives on conquest, while the US continued to build prosperity at home through free markets with a non-expanding state, would Germany have the ability to attack the mammoth and powerful US? No chance. American defense would be like swatting flies.
So many American lives lost in WWII due to myths and lies. It is now so long after the fact, and yet the myths live on.
Paul,
You are probably right on your comments, but I would say that they only focus on the ETO/Germany. Do not forget that Japan attacked USA, and this was the cause of american involvement in the conflict. Of course you can argue that Roosevelt almost made the japanese to attack, or that he most surely would have found another reason to declare war on Germany.
In conclusion, considering that there were the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Tojo´s Japan, I think that it would have been very unlikely that the USA could have avoided war.
Hi Eduardo:
You are correct in that you have indeed anticipated my position that Roosevelt ENGINEERED that attack on Perl Harbor. Japan did not want to take on the US. Roosevelt forced its hand. He won the election on the platform that he would keep the boys of America out of the European nightmare. In the mean-time, he planned to weasel his way into it. And he did it by sacrificing those serving at Pearl Harbor. What an SOB.
On the possibilities of avoiding war in a war-torn world, i like to consider the Swiss. Does anyone really think the US would be more vulnerable to a successful military invasion than would Switzerland? The history of their foreign policy makes an interesting study. “Want to invade us? Fine, we’ll just assassinate your leadership from the top down.” Political leaders, cowards that they are, would prefer to take on a nation that kills their conscripts and leaves the source of the problem (themselves) alone.
This is a rather parochial description. For a start, it was merely the North American theatre of a much larger conflict, the Seven Years’ War, in which the British were the victims of French aggression.
The North American and Indian campaigns were responses to this; any claim that it was a “foreign” war would hardly have stopped the French moving in if they had actually won.
hi germany was bad
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