Surviving Civil War II

The first great American Civil War was about ending slavery. Civil War II is about the same thing, except the slave owners in this case are the bureaucrat and entitlement classes who have yoked productive citizens and future generations to a grindstone of $100 trillion of unfunded social liabilities, environmental Gaia worship and bureaucratic strangulation.

This time things are different. We cannot get out of our financial and regulatory black hole unless one of two things happens:

A) The productive class resigns itself to being tethered to a permanent millstone of egregious taxation and inflation in support of the consumption class of bureaucrats and entitled, or B) There is a Civil War and revolt of the productive class, an economic default on the obligation to support the non-productive classes.

One can always argue that big government is good for this or that social welfare - save the children, save the poor, save the racially dispossessed, save the whale. However, the absolute size of the unfunded financial liabilities to support expansive government social largesse (most of which does not realistically help the above social causes), argues that this time things are different.

There is no need to spend time arguing about which option will be taken. That which cannot be, cannot be. There is no way to overcome the size of future entitlements except through default by the productive classes on the state's overextended promises. Since option A, the status quo which leaves the current governmental order in place is untenable; we are left with option B, revolt as the path of necessity.

But this book is not advocating a war of freedom, an insurrection, uprisings or anything disruptive of any kind as solutions to our current dilemmas. Instead, the forces of disruption are already upon us and at work, so the nature of this book is entirely defensive and reactive, not proactive. This isn't a call to break into someone else's home, steal their property, rape their women and kill the owner (as anarchists might suggest) in the pursuit of some abstract revolutionary freedom. Instead, this is a call to bolt your door, hide your valuables and defend yourself from others who are now trying to get in to your home to rape, pillage and enslave you.

In other words, you can't change the devolutionary course that we are on, except at the margins; the Leviathan of state is auguring in of its own colossal weight. If you are smart though, and hunker down tightly enough, you might just get through this upheaval with some health and a little wealth intact.

DAXTON BROWN is also the author of "Going Galt: Surviving Economic Armageddon," and "Harry: Money Mob & Influence," a biography of Senator Harry Reid.