One Mistake, One Hundred Million Deaths: The Two Biggest Ideas of the 20th Century

By J. Don Rogers

The dream of America flowered from an idea that was irrational and audacious—a man from LaMancha “impossible dream”. Every American must know what dreams people were arguing about 100 years ago.
It all began with an intellectual disagreement of abstract ideas that eventually turned cities and towns into debris and humans into animals!
This is the story of the most eventful human struggle in thousands of years.
They were among the most advanced people in history and enjoyed the gift of the first global economy; then they got into an argument and 100 million people died.
At the outset of WWI Europe’s wealth creating global economy and democracies quickly succumbed to tyranny. Now here at home many of us stand jaws agape as millions of Americans passively submit to illegal edicts spewing from wooden bureaucrats in governments and cyberpunks in Silicon Valley. We are smarter than the Europeans, you say. Only in one important way can we be smarter, if we learn from their mistake.
If you feel a lack of clarity about the big questions of society you can avoid years immersed in philosophical clutter. Here you will find the five immovable requirements of a free and moral society.
We have now glimpsed what oligarchical tyranny looks like. Who can save America? Our best hope is the common man, the producer, but ultimately the future of America lies in the hands of our young people.
Today our youth see growing disintegration of our civilizing institutions. The cords of church and family may be broken. Students may look to academia for orderly guidance but they are often lost in a roiling sea of little ideas. Many students are bored by the minutiae or threatened by the exclusive jargon of experts. It is widely known that many young people crave powerful principles clearly presented. For this reason this book will enjoy a target audience willing to turn its pages.
No student should leave college without the little book One Hundred Million Deaths.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Methodical Press
• Release date: Feb 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662909474

Book preview

Preface

While millenniums crept by, the common man subsisted in a fog of ignorance. He toiled and died. He was like a chained wretch in Plato’s allegory of the dark cave. Then someone finally turned on the light and the chains were loosed.

This is the story of how the light turned on. This is the story of the two big ideas of the twentieth century. The intense conflict and turmoil of the first half of the twentieth century were the consequence of a clash between two incompatible ideologies. During that time, two opposing views came from the pens of two friends. First, Frederick Hayek said that the economy is about the actions of individuals. On the other hand, John Maynard Keynes saw government as the source of power, therefore the primary means for change. Keynes was the most influential economist of the twentieth century. In this book, I will look to Frederick Hayek as the guide to the truth. He faced opposition of his views from the beginning. The Road to Serfdom (See Author Notes: Hayek’s Little Book.), would bring hope and freedom to millions of people, but faced rejection by publishers and vitriol from his peers.

The receptive reader, I believe, will accept the dominant theme of this work: statists governments destroy; free markets create. Also, the blueprint of freedom presented here is firmly confirmed by history, logic, and reason. However, if some specific isolated facts of support of the theme may be judged inadequate, the mass of evidence remains unassailable.

In recent years the term liberalism has been co-opted by its opponents. In today’s language it no longer refers to tenets of freedom but almost the opposite meaning of freedom. Today’s liberals seek more government control of the individual. Therefore, today the ideas of limited government may be referred to in general as classical liberalism.

CHAPTER ONE

Two Big Ideas

The free world watched in horror as a student in the Tiananmen Square massacre left the crowd and with raised hand stepped in the path of an advancing tank. Who would do such a thing? What did he want?

Another place and time: Christmas night 1776 drums rolled in the camps. General Washington’s small army of 2,400 men abandoned their campfires and marched toward the Delaware River. Many were starved, sick, and barefooted and with the most profound silence, each man carrying sixty pounds, these resolute men leaned into the dark fury of wind, rain, and snow. Blood left on the frozen ground, marked the route they had taken.¹

A century later, a famous historian would say of those men and that night, It may be doubted whether so small a number of men ever employed so short a space of time with greater and more lasting effects upon the history of the world. Why did they do it? What did they want? History would answer this question.

Then in the fall of 1989, in response to one of the most poignant events of the twentieth century, the aging and ill Fredrick Hayek uttered these words, I told you so. Hayek had predicted this momentous event. President Reagan had demanded it, with words that moistened eyes and kindled the resolve of those who toiled for freedom: Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! On November 9, 1989, the Berlin wall of cement, stone, and wire was first breached by bare hands and hammers. That scar on humanity had succumbed to the righteous fury and will of a few good people who would not be silenced. The desire for freedom once again evoked courageous acts of sacrifice.

Hayek understood the wellsprings of freedom. He had shown the meek the path away from serfdom. He had warned the haughty that imperial deceit is fatal. Now the great voice was going silent. Just four words: I Told You So—a fitting epitaph.

Hayek joined the patriots of history who spent their life forces in struggle against oppressive governments. He knew that along with freedom would come a surprise gift: wealth, which springs forth out of the mysterious free market.

If you believe in this idea—that knowledge made useful through the free market has provided our great abundance—you might want to thank Friedrich Von Hayek. Astonishingly, throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the brightest lights among