The statist systems that 20th-century Americans brought into existence have brought us a life of constant chaos, crisis, war, conflict, hostility, monetary debauchery, massive taxation, death, suffering, tyranny, and oppression.

I'm referring, of course, to such systems as the welfare state, the warfare state, the national-security state, the drug war, foreign wars, foreign interventions, sanctions, embargoes, state-sponsored assassinations, foreign empire of military bases, immigration controls, income taxation, paper money, the Federal Reserve, public (i.e., government) schooling, the managed-regulated economy, trade wars, and others.

Who can possibly be pleased with the results of these deadly and destructive systems? Yet, most Americans continue to hew to them. Why?

I think one reason is that these are the systems under which they have been born and raised and which they are convinced are all part and parcel of the free society, the free-enterprise economic system, and the constitutional government under which they think they are living.

That's the mindset with which every American child is inculcated from the first grade. That indoctrination, day after day, year after year, for 12 long years naturally has a deep effect on people. How can it not? It stays with them through adulthood and even to the day they die. On their death beds, they remain absolutely convinced that they lived in a free society, under a free-enterprise economic system, and under a limited-government republic — and they are extremely grateful for it.

Thus, when they learn that there are people called libertarians who are striving to achieve a free society, a free-enterprise system, and a limited-government republic, they are totally befuddled. They don't know what to make of it. They simply decide that libertarians are weird and refuse to consider, much less embrace, their ideas and philosophy.

After all, let's face it: Libertarians want an entirely different way of life than that under which we live. We want to dismantle, repeal, and end, not reform or improve, all those statist systems.

So, if one is convinced that he already lives in a free society, under a free-enterprise system, and under a limited-government republic, as Americans have been indoctrinated into believing, then what libertarians are proposing is something that must be different from freedom, free enterprise, and limited government. For the indoctrinated mind, that can be very confusing and very frightening.

In the late 1980s, I served as program director for The Foundation for Economic Education, which, at that time, was located in a small town north of New York City called Irvington-on-Hudson. The FEE staff told me that many residents of Irvington were convinced that FEE was communist organization.

Of course, that's ridiculous. Libertarianism, with its strong emphasis on individualism, voluntarism, Austrian free-market economics, economic liberty, and civil liberties is the exact opposite of communism or any other form of collectivism. In fact, libertarianism is the antidote to such bad isms as communism, socialism, and fascism.

But there was a logic to the mindset of those people in Irvington. Given their conviction that America is already a land of freedom, free enterprise, and limited government, any organization that is criticizing and condemning the systems under which Americans are living and advocating a completely different way of life must necessarily be communist.

The plight of the American people can be summed up in the song by Lee Greenwood entitled "God bless the USA," which states in part: "I thank my lucky stars to be living here today 'cause the flag still stands for freedom and they can't take that away. And I'm proud to be an American where at least I know I'm free and I won't forget the men who died who gave that right to me." Their plight is also encapsulated in the words of Johann Goethe: "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."