Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

Donald Trump and his supporters were certain that by restoring him to the presidency, they could make America great again. They are going to be as sorely disappointed at the end of Trump’s term in office as they were after his first term in office. Trump will not make America great again.

The problem, however, is not Donald Trump. The fact is that no one can make America great again — at least not if America maintains the same political and economic systems that have characterized our nation for almost 100 years. It is those systems that constitute an insurmountable obstacle to making America great again, no matter who is elected president.

Unfortunately, however, conservative Americans are not ready to accept that. They are convinced that by electing Trump and then vesting him with unchecked, omnipotent power, he will be the “man on the white horse” who will make America great again.

It won’t happen. At the end of this road to national “greatness” lies an increasingly weakened, dysfunctional society — one in which liberty and privacy have been destroyed — one in which the American people will be existing as subservient, dependent, and fearful serfs whose purpose in life is simply to serve the state and the greater good of society.

There is one — and only one — way for America to be great again. That way is to restore the sound, founding principles of liberty of our nation and then build on them.

Obviously, this entails deep soul-searching of how we started as a nation and how we ended up where we are today. It also requires Americans to think at a higher level — one that involves principles and ideals. Let’s examine what needs to be done to restore greatness to our land.

The national-security state

America’s founding political system was a limited-government republic, one that was characterized by three separate and independent branches, with a very small military force falling under the control of the executive branch. The Constitution, which called the federal government into existence, prohibited the government from killing people without “due process of law,” a term that encompasses notice of charges and a hearing or trial where the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused has committed some crime. The Bill of Rights guaranteed that the accused had the right to trial by a jury composed at random from regular citizens in the community. The Bill of Rights also prohibited the imposition of cruel and unusual punishments.

All that changed in the late 1940s, when the federal government was converted into what is called a national-security state. It effectively involved a fourth branch of government consisting of the Pentagon, a vast and powerful military establishment, an empire of domestic and foreign military bases, the CIA, the NSA, and, to a certain extent, the FBI.

Although this conversion took place without a constitutional amendment, it constituted the most radical change in America’s political system in the history of the country. Over time, the national-security branch became the most powerful branch — the branch to which the other three branches defer, especially in foreign affairs.

Moreover, the constitutional limitations on the power of the federal government disintegrated with the conversion to a national-security state. The Pentagon and the CIA now wielded the power to engage in state-sponsored assassinations, thereby nullifying the constitutional prohibition against killing people without due process of law. They also wielded the power to inflict cruel and unusual punishments on people, including torture. They also now had the power to keep people incarcerated for as long as they wanted, ignoring the constitutional prohibition against indefinite incarceration without trial. They also wielded the power to engage in mass secret surveillance, especially through the NSA. Moreover, once U.S. officials launched their “war on terrorism” after the 9/11 attacks, the Pentagon and the CIA wielded the power to nullify the right of trial by jury and employ trial by military tribunal instead.

It is worth mentioning that all of these omnipotent, dark-side powers apply not just to foreigners but also to American citizens. The fact is that Americans now live under a national-security state system in which their very own government wields the power to assassinate, torture, surveil, and indefinitely detain them. What makes the whole thing so perverse is that Americans have been indoctrinated into believing that all this tyranny is “freedom.”

It’s also worth mentioning that the conversion to a national-security state was accompanied by a foreign policy of foreign wars and interventions, as well as an empire of foreign military bases, which have been used to inflict massive death and destruction on people in foreign lands.

There is one solution to all this: Dismantle the national-security state and restore America’s founding system of a limited-government republic, with just a relatively small, basic military force — one that lacks the capability to engage in foreign wars, interventions, coups, and wars of aggression.

The welfare state

Americans adopted the welfare-state way of life in the 1930s. It is based on the principle of using the force of government — for example, the Internal Revenue Service — to take money by force from people to whom it belongs and give it to those to whom it does not belong. The crown jewels of this system are Social Security and Medicare, but the system also encompasses many other welfare programs, like food stamps, public housing, education grants, subsidies, corporate bailouts, and others.

The welfare state has converted the nation into one of warring factions in which certain groups do their best to plunder and loot other people while, at the same time, protect their own income and wealth from being seized. The war is perversely justified under the name of “goodness, care, and compassion,” but the reality is that it is devoid of such virtues. After all, there is nothing good, caring, and compassionate about the IRS. Refuse to pay your taxes, and they will incarcerate you. If you resist them with deadly force, they will kill you.

At the same time, the welfare state has converted an enormously large sector of society into people who are dependent on the dole. Constantly fearful of losing their dole, they have convinced themselves that without the dole, people would be dying in the streets. The dole has proven to be political heroin. It has severely damaged people’s faith in themselves, family, others, free will, voluntary charity, church groups, charitable organizations, and God. Dole-dependents now place their faith in the IRS, mandatory “charity,” coercion, and Caesar.

America once had the finest health-care system in history. Prices were low and stable. Going to the doctor was like going to the grocery store. Thus, no one needed major medical insurance. Doctors loved what they did in life. Along with hospitals, they willingly provided free medical care to the poor.

Then along came Medicare and Medicaid. Not surprisingly, healthcare costs began soaring. Then came the ongoing, never-ending, perpetual health-care crisis. Today, Americans are now considering adopting a full-fledged socialist health-care system, just like Cuba and North Korea.

There is but one solution to America’s welfare state: Repeal it, immediately, along with the income tax that funds it. Leave people free to accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth and decide for themselves what to do with it.

The drug war

The drug war has been going on for many decades. It has provided the federal government with the power to destroy the liberty and privacy, including financial privacy, of the American people. Since it is perpetual, the government’s omnipotent control over the American people has become perpetual as well.

When government wields the power to punish people for ingesting substances that the government hasn’t approved, there is no way that people in that society can legitimately be considered free. A free society necessarily is one in which people are free to possess, ingest, or distribute any substance they want.

What the government did was seize on a social problem in society, such as alcoholism or drug addiction, and then used that social problem as a way to take control of the citizenry. The important thing to note about the drug war is that it will never be “won,” especially because it is drug illegality that has given rise to drug cartels and drug violence, which the government then uses as an excuse for keeping its drug war going. That means that the destruction of liberty and privacy that comes with the drug war has become a permanent, ongoing feature of American life, even though Americans continue to sing about how free they are.

There is but one solution to America’s never-ending drug war: Legalize drugs — all drugs.

Paper money and the Federal Reserve

The Constitution called into existence a monetary system in which gold coins and silver coins were the nation’s official money. That’s because they wanted nothing to do with paper money. They knew that governments throughout history had used paper money to plunder and loot people through inflationary debasement of the currency.

But in the 1930s, and without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment, U.S. officials decreed an end to the constitutional monetary system that had been in place for more than 100 years. Americans were ordered to turn in their gold coins to the federal government, on pain of fine and imprisonment for failing to do so. In return, they were given irredeemable paper notes.

Before that, in 1913, Americans had created a central bank, the Federal Reserve System. The combination of the Fed with the paper-money system produced decade after decade of monetary debauchery, by which the government was able to steal from people by simply printing ever-increasing vast quantities of paper money. At the same time, this new system of monetary central planning produced a never-ending series of booms and recessions, beginning with the boom in the 1920s and the economic depression of the 1930s.

There is but one solution to America’s monetary mayhem: the separation of money and the state — that is, a totally free-market monetary system — one in which the state is prohibited from interfering, controlling, providing, or regulating money.

Immigration controls

For all of our lives, America’s system of immigration controls has produced nothing but death, suffering, abuse, and humiliation for people seeking to save or improve their lives or simply to pursue happiness, which America’s Declaration of Independence observes is a natural, God-given right that no government, not even the U.S. government, can legitimately infringe on.

There is a simple reason for the perpetual crisis along the border. This is a system based on the socialist principle of central planning. The government centrally plans the movements of millions of people in one of the most complex labor markets in history. It cannot be done, at least not without what Ludwig von Mises called “planned chaos.” What better term to describe America’s perpetual immigration crisis?

Moreover, America’s immigration-control system has come with an ever-increasing police state.   Governmental trespasses and warrantless searches of ranches and farms. The criminalization of hiring, transporting, caring for, or harboring illegal immigrants. Violent raids on American businesses. Mass deportations. A Berlin Wall and the eminent domain stealing of people’s land on which to build it. Concertina wire hidden in the Rio Grande designed to cut people up. Separation of children from parents to punish them and to serve as a message of deterrence to others. Boarding of Greyhound buses to check people’s papers. Highway checkpoints where travelers are forced to stop and submit to questioning and warrantless searches. Roving Border Patrol checkpoints where agents stop whatever vehicle they want at random and subject it to a warrantless search.

Many Americans in the rest of the country thought that the immigration police state would always be limited to the borderlands. As I have long contended, that was always a pipe dream. Faced with the failure of their police-state measures, it was inevitable that their police state would ultimately be expanded nationwide, which is what we are seeing today.

Did you ever think you would see the day when the U.S. government would wield the power to rendition people, both foreigners and Americans, to a brutal Central American regime for incarceration and torture, especially without being convicted of some crime and sentenced in a court of law? Did you ever think you’d see the day that America’s fundamental rights, such as freedom of speech and freedom of association, would come under direct attack using the federal government’s war on immigrants? Welcome to America’s nationwide immigration police state. Keep in mind something important: Even if the federal immigration police state proves to be effective in reducing the entry of foreigners into America, not one immigration police-state measure will ever be repealed. After all, if it were repealed, then the immigration “problem” could resume. Therefore, the destruction of liberty and privacy that has come with America’s immigration policy state has become permanent, even as Americans express gratitude for living in a free country.

As I have long maintained, there is but one solution to all this death, mayhem, and police-state tyranny — open borders — genuine open borders — the same system of open borders we have domestically between the states. I repeat, for emphasis: Open borders is the only solution.

The public-school system

It would be difficult to find a better example of a socialist system than public (i.e., government) schooling. Education is centrally planned at a national, state, or local level. Funding is by the force of taxation. Its customers are acquired by force through compulsory school attendance laws.

This is where children receive their indoctrination. This is the system in which children are taught to accept all the other statist systems in the name of “freedom.” This is the system in which people are inculcated with mindsets of conformity, obedience, and deference to authority. This is where individuals are converted into serfs.

There is only one solution to educational socialism: the separation of school and state, just as our ancestors separated church and state— that is, the end of all state involvement in education — a totally free-market educational system.

The road to greatness

Statists argue that these solutions are “utopian.” But that term means that they are impossible to achieve. But they have been achieved. In America from 1880-1910, there was no national-security state, welfare state, drug war, paper money, Federal Reserve, income taxation, and IRS, and almost no immigration controls and public schooling. If they could do it, so can we. And we can build on what they showed could be done, with the aim of leading the world to the highest reaches of freedom, peace, prosperity, and harmony in the history of mankind.

What’s important to recognize is that neither Donald Trump nor anyone else can make America’s dysfunctional statist system work. The only thing that will work is the dismantling of America’s statist system. That’s what will make America great again.

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Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.