Predictions: None Dare...pg. 84-86

 It is with great regret that I announce that this book has not jumped the shark, it should have, because it's poorly written, poorly researched, and comes to terrible conclusions. That alone should have been enough but it does another thing that should have confined it to the trash fire of history and somehow didn't: it made predictions. 

Predictions, that never came true. Well, some of them did, but they did so only because the predictions are so general that you can figure out something that will fit. It's the broken clock being right. Bill Cooper and Alex Jones both claim to have predicted 9/11, but their prediction was "something big is going to happen." It lacked any kind of specificity and if we look at their track record, they were more thinking that it was going to be an NWO type thing anyway. So, it doesn't really count as a prediction any more than my prediction that someone will win the lottery...eventually counts as a prediction. 

Predictions are difficult because when they don't come true, then we have to do some justifying for why they didn't come true. Live, like Bill Cooper, a person can merely push it back a few more weeks until something happens, or a new issue pops up that will distract the audience. In a book, well things are permanent and it's difficult to justify it. You need a follow-up book but there's little evidence that someone will read it after your first predictions failed. Well, enough foreplay let's get to the list.

1] Restriction on taking money out of the country and on the establishment or retention of a foreign bank account by an American citizen.

2] Abolition of private ownership of hand guns

3] Detention of individuals without justicial process

4] Requirements that private financial transactions be keyed to social security numbers or other government identification so that government records of these transactions can be kept and fed into a computer

5] Use of compulsory education laws to forbid attendance at presently existing private schools

6] Compulsory non-military service

7] Compulsory psychological treatment for nongovernment workers or public school children

8] An official declaration that anti-Communist organizations are subversive and subsequent legal action taken to suppress them

9] Laws limiting the number of people allowed to meet in a private home. 

10] Any significant change in passport regulations to make passports more difficult to obtain or use

11] Wage and price controls, especially in a non-wartime situation

12] Any kind of compulsaor registration with the government of where individuals work

13] Any attempt to make a new major law by executive decree (that is, actually put into effect, not merely authorized as existing executive orders)

This list can be summarized in one word: vague. You might think that 7 is specific, and the words are but Allen is going to claim that any psychological treatment ordered by a court counts as 7. At first glance it seems like he's saying "compulsory psychological treatment for all" but what he's actually saying is "any." My oldest kid, prior to starting school, had to take a placement test. Part of that test was a quick developmental evaluation: does that count? No, of course not, but he'll count it. He claims in the next paragraph that organized groups are actively campaigning for it, but he neglects to give us the names of the groups or the campaigns. I'm getting ahead of myself, let's go down this list and discuss whether or not they have come true in the 50 years since Allen wrote this book.

1] True...ish. If you move a bunch of money into or from a foreign account there are federal regulators that will take a look...unless you are a church. This type of law normally concerned corporations for a while but after 9/11 the examination started looking at specific countries. If I open an account in a foreign country I do have to justify it, and it's a paper form but I'll give him this one. 

2] False: Scalia basically made this impossible when he fabricated his decision in D.C. v. Heller. 

3] True...ish: Bail reform advocates basically say that this is the case. People are being held without trial if they cannot post bail because the court system is so backed up due to understaffing and underfunding. I have a feeling that this isn't what Allen means. Someone arrested for the suspicion of dealing narcotics being held for six months before trial is unlikely to be the source of Allen's sympathy and if this is the case, he's right for the wrong reason. 1/2 credit.

4] This one is pretty much true. You can't make a financial transaction without some identification. 

5] False. This one is weird. He's saying that public schools would be used to supplant private schools? I've heard this kind of complaint from some home schoolers, but those aren't a private school. 

6] The non-military service is a feature of life that many other countries have, that the US does not. I wouldn't consider most of those countries to be non-free countries. Nevetheless, it never happened here. Oddly, he doesn't consider compulsory military service to be a signpost to slavery. 

7] I addressed this above. It's kind of true, but not in the way the thinks. I'm going to be generous and give him 1/2 credit. 

8] Interestingly, the FBI only three years ago began warning that groups with an anti-Communist bent are a larger threat than foreign terrorism. The problem for Allen though is that the reason is that these people have committed crimes. The Oath Keepers were involved in the failed coup last year. Are they anti-Communist, among other things, yes. I'm not going to give him credit though because the group members are being arrested for crimes and not simply because they are members of the group.

9] False, the court systems won't even allow the number of people in a church to be limited during a contagious disease, so this one just isn't the case. Curiously this fear was spread throughout my state during the pandemic even though no one was planning on this as a policy. 

10] No idea. Passports are usually a little difficult to get, but I don't know how much that has changed. 

11] Allen complained about wage and price controls before, Nixon floated the idea but then quickly abandoned this as a position. I said at the time, Allen's problem is anything that helps poor people, which this would have. I don't know why Allen thinks this, but I also don't see how this is a step on the road to slavery. 

12] This one is true. If you work, the IRS is informed of this. I don't know if Allen means this, but I'm reminded of a scene in the American President where Annette Benning accuses the president (Michael Douglas) of using the CIA to find her phone number, and he replies that no, the IRS is actually much easier. 

13] False

14] This is the most interesting one to me. Executive power has only increased in the half century since Allen wrote this book and it is is a problem. Every president seems to take more and more authority in making executive decrees. Congress needs to fight against this, but Allen doesn't know what he's arguing against. The president's ability to shape policy through executive decree surrounds his authority over executive agencies. So the current president can make certain policies through the justice department by refusing to prosecute certain crimes or refusing to reauthorize others. Obama, toward the end of his term refused to reauthorize the Cuba embargo. That is a foreign policy change that the president did through omission that could be overridden by congress--it would need the veto override majority--but it is a unilateral decision. 

I actually agree with Allen here. In cases like the Obama decision above, we have legally ceded certain authorities to the executive branch and I don't think that this is a mistake--there is an executive branch for a reason, but if congress passes legislation and it is signed into law, the president can't simply decide to not enforce it. That's not how the system is supposed to work. What if a president, out of spite, begins underfunding and tanking a law just out of spite as Hubert Humphrey did in response to losing the election to Gover Cleveland. Further, to my agreement with Allen, is that this is a signpost to tyranny. The whole point of this governmental experiment is that the people in power are checked by others in power. I am reluctant to get into a whole polarization, partisan, conversation about the current state of the US government, but I'll repeat my agreement: this executive decree ability is a problem. 

So what is the final tally? 5 true (including two half credits) and the rest false. So...I guess we're not a country full of slaves. 

The worst part of this book is that I spent more time writing about these fourteen signposts to slavery than Allen did. He claims that Nixon invoked 1, 11, and 14. Which, yeah, those were the true ones, but then he claims that 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 12, and 13 are being campaigned for. He never, explains them further, who is advocating them except with reference to Victor Reuther in 1961 for putting anti-Government groups on a watch list. Reuther was a prominent labor activist and a victim of an assassination attempt in 1949-so he might have a concern about anti-Communist groups. He was however not a government official and only worked for the UAW. 

People like lists, which is why Allen has included one. But it he needs to either excise it or he needs to explain it. These vague generalities will cause someone to connect some emotional dots with regard to the claim and that is the best case scenario here. Maybe these signposts are correct, but it's been over fifty years and we've got four correct. I still don't get how this book was so influential.