Hayek here.

When I was raised from the dead a few days ago, I did a lot of research on the Internet – such a useful tool! – and I have to say, I’m appalled with the current state of America. Did not I warn all of you in 1944 that you were at risk for repeating Germany’s mistakes, and that there was a high probability that “developments [would] take a similar course?” (58). In 1944, I was talking about the risk of your country becoming a fascist regime. Not only are you headed down that road (and it “becomes more difficult to turn back as one advances” (58)), but also you have made an even more obvious mistake: you have already gone into serious debt from this ‘war’ in Iraq (though I have yet to figure out the point of this war; the Internet, it turns out, is not good for everything). As Ben was raising me from the dead, I heard him telling one of his classes that Germany just finished paying off their debts from WWI. Some research has told me that the final payment was issued on October 4, 2010, ninety-one years after the Treaty of Versailles. Their WWI debts totaled $785 billion US 2011 dollars. As far as I can tell, this war in Iraq is going to cost your country over $3 trillion, which, if you make payments at the same speed as Germany, will take you over 350 years to pay off. That’s longer than your country has been in existence. It seems to me that this war is causing a total collapse of your economy, with a 9% unemployment rate as of January 2011. I wrote in 1944 that “economic freedom” is the prerequisite to “any other freedom” (133). Will you all finally start to believe me now? Your civil liberties have been compromised because your former President Bush declared a State of Emergency almost ten years ago. The government is going to keep placing restrictions on you in order to pay for this war, and it is not possible to have social or political freedom without first having economic freedom, and “political freedom is meaningless without economic freedom” (132). “Even a formal recognition of individual rights, or of the equal rights of minorities, loses all significance in a state which embarks on complete control of economic life,” (122) which is what your country is doing right now. “By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable” (119). I see your country going in this direction, and my “essential point, that the discretion left to the executive organs wielding coercive power should be reduced as much as possible, is clear enough” (112). I cannot stay alive any longer, and so the rest is up to you. Please, for the love of individualism, do not let your country completely follow Germany’s path, and try and regain your economic freedom.