Last week, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson paid a visit to Republican leaders in the US congress to urge them to send American F-16 warplanes to Ukraine.  In doing so, Mr. Johnson is continuing a century-long tradition of Brits attempting to drag the United States into European conflicts that are of no consequence to us.  Stretching back through Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden, David Lloyd George, and Edward Grey, the UK has managed to twice drag America into wars to defend their empire at a cost of more than 1.4 million American casualties and untold suffering and treasure.  Before we further involve ourselves in this war, it is time for Americans to wake up and take a long, hard look at what our foreign military interventions have wrought.
 
As children, we were taught that World Wars I and II were glorious moral crusades to “make the world safe for democracy” and then to “rid the world of tyranny.”  Anyone that bothers to read a book, of course knows that the first world war was fought to ensure that politically influential American bankers were repaid the billions they had loaned to France and Britain, generate massive income for the DuPont family and other arms manufacturers, increase the power of our government over its citizens, preserve the British Empire, and for the aggrandizement of the unfathomably arrogant President Woodrow Wilson.  After the deaths of 20 million boys and the wounding and maiming of 21 million more, the one-sided Treaty of Versailles did not so much end World War I, but was rather a shaky 20 year ceasefire that ended with the Nazi invasion of Poland.  Moreover, far from making the world safe for democracy, the war enlarged the empires of Britain and France, leaving tens of millions around the world under foreign rule, with no say in their form of government and no rights to their own natural resources.  Far worse, it resulted in the collapse of the Russian Empire and establishment by the Bolsheviks of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – a movement that would spread and ultimately kill nearly 100 million people during the 20thcentury.  
 
World War II was sold to Americans as a fight to rid the world of tyranny.  Roosevelt and Churchill’s Atlantic Charter set out the war aims of the two nations and read in part, 
 
“After the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, [we] hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all men in all lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want…”
 
At the end, 400,000 young American men were dead along with 70 millionothers.  Was tyranny banished by this unimaginable conflagration?  Hardly.  The war liberated northern France[1], Belgium, and The Netherlands from occupation or colonial rule (The Philippines was liberated from American colonial rule in 1946). Simultaneously, it left Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania, and Eastern Germany in the iron grip of socialist dictators.  With the exception of Yugoslavia, all of these countries were controlled and/or occupied by our wartime allies, the Soviet butchers of the USSR.  The British Empire was on its deathbed and the American Empire was inaugurated.  One of our government’s first orders of business was bankrolling the brutal French invasion of Vietnam, which had been freed from French colonial rule during the war.  So much for people “dwelling in safety within their own boundaries.”
 
America has been expanding its global empire ever since it supplanted the British.  Once, the British monarchy could boast that “The sun never sets on the British Empire.”  With colonies stretching from the south Pacific, to India, Africa, and North America, it was true that the sun always shone somewhere in the realm.  Today, the British royalty of yore would blush at the scope of the American Empire.  While Britain, at its zenith, held 30 or so countries in its grip[2], the American Empire exerts significant control across the entire planet, having its imperial troops deployed to 750 military installations in 80 countries; just over half of all countries with a population over 1 million.  


The modern American Empire operates differently than the Roman and British Empires before it. Instead of sending Proconsuls and Governor-Generals to directly operate the state apparatus in its colonies, the US government has dispatched its military proconsuls – known as “Commanders-in-Chief” - to the six military districts into which they have divided the world (See map).  Our government deals with other nations primarily through its military proconsuls rather the old-fashioned method of using diplomats.  These Generals and Admirals exert their influence with a carrot and stick approach; promises of protection, military exchanges, and financial aid in exchange for economically favorable terms for politically connected corporations back home.  With American warships, bombers, fighters, soldiers, and marines in their countries or their backyard, the stick doesn’t even need to be mentioned.
 
Like the British, America has bankrupted itself with the cost of maintaining its empire and now teeters on the brink of collapse.  Britain severely wounded itself by its foolhardy war guarantee to the French in 1914, then sealed its fate with an even more absurd war guarantee to Poland in 1939. By contrast, America currently has guarantees to go to war on behalf of fifty countries worldwide, and – without consulting the American people - is presently reconfiguring its forces specifically for an impending war with China.
 
Boris Johnson’s visit is Déjà vu all over again; another British leader is urging us to directly involve ourselves[3]in yet another European war; this time a Slavic civil war on the fringes of the continent.  Only this enemy doesn’t have Panzer tanks and horse-drawn artillery – they have intercontinental ballistic missiles and have already threatened to use them.
 
Today, eight decades after World War II, with our troops still garrisoned where they stood in August 1945 – and now, with the relentless expansion of NATO, are right on Russia’s doorstep – we are coming to the end of our short reign of world dominion.  While there are differences, we’ve followed the same road to ruin as did the Romans and British before us; as Mark Twain once said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does often rhyme.”  
 
Like the Brits, we too may be able to salvage ourselves as simply a member, not master, of the community of nations and maybe even come out a little better than they did; but if our morally and financially bankrupt masters in Washington continue to simultaneously poke the Russian Bear and Chinese Dragon in hopes of keeping their grip on power just a little longer, our republic will cease to exist in any recognizable form.  
 
Randolph Bourne wrote a century ago that “War is the health of the State;” if you think Washington politicians, bureaucrats, and power brokers won’t sacrifice you and your children to satisfy their lust for power, just cast a look at the broken and maimed bodies of American boys spread across the globe and the lies those who sent them to their deaths have been telling us for decades.

--------------------------------------------
[1]The Nazis only occupied the north because the French government was allied with Germany. (You read that right; read a short history here)

[2]This depends on how you count them; many British holdings were tiny and/or uninhabited islands, or small enclaves within a larger colony.

[3]Hundreds of troops would have to accompany the jets; you can’t just send them over in a crate and toss them the keys.  Pilots need to be trained, planes need constant, highly technical maintenance and other forms of ground support.

As the government and media pivot from pandemic hysteria to war hysteria, I thought I would take some time to put together a reminder/educational piece for readers about the veracity of what they hear in the media and coming out of their leaders’ mouths.  Americans would be wise to pay very close attention to what they are being told, then think long and hard about who benefits from whatever that may be.  Regardless of your politics, or where you fall on the approved left-right spectrum we are permitted to publicly debate, one thing is guaranteed; you are being lied to.  
 
When modern Americans gave up participating in local and national civic life, and exchanged it for professional sports fanaticism, comic book cinema, celebrity worship, the X-Box, and social media drivel, they also opened the way to subjugation by a supremely powerful elite who now control every aspect of our lives, including what we are permitted to say and even think.
 
You may think you are free, but you may only choose a Republican or Democrat to wield this unchecked power.  Americans would rather blindly accept propaganda as news than accept reality; it’s ugly and uncomfortable.  President Kennedy alluded to this when he said, “Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” Americans believe that the freedom of the press will protect them from dangerous and criminal behavior by our government and its corporate patrons, but MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News are not in the business of truth; they aren’t even in true competition with one another.  These corporate news outlets are permitted to exist so as to give the populace the illusion of being informed, while engendering suspicion, fear, and hatred, so as to turn us against one another – and they are doing a fabulous job.  The people you vote into office have virtually no say in how the government is run or what the laws they vote on will look like. If you actually believe that the Republican or Democrat political parties, Fox News, or CNN have any interest in ensuring your well-being or your access to truth, you may as well stop reading because there is no hope for you.  Yes, there are individuals in these organizations with noble motives, but they are kept within strict parameters or they don’t last long.
 
The Republicrats and big media are interested in the same two things that have obsessed mankind since the dawn of civilization; power and money.  America’s current congress is composed of a majority of millionaires; as of 2019, the richest 50 millionaires in congress were composed of 20 Democrats and 30 Republicans. One of the fastest ways to become wealthy in the United States is to get elected to congress.  You’ll never see any of these fabulously wealthy elites on Capitol Hill send their sons to war or offer to pony up one penny of their own money to pay for their hairbrained, wasteful, and corrupt schemes – they want your money for that.  Whether it’s a grant to pay for a bus station named after themselves in their district, or a $5 trillion war; we proletarians and our offspring can pay for it.  But all this is dark story of corruption that could fill volumes; just remember the motivation.
 
Back to the information you and I are spoon-fed by our news provider of choice.  Let’s start with recent history; first the September 11 attacks shook our nation to its foundations, followed immediately by the never-solved anthrax attacks.  This provided the power elite with a free hand to eliminate most all of our privacy rights, conduct warrantless searches, illegal surveillance, kidnappings, torture, preemptive war and imbued the government with near limitless powers to detain, imprison, disappear, and even assassinate American citizens without trial. Meanwhile the populace cowered under the theater of fear put on for us by the media; dutifully parroting the government’s line; color-coded alerts, nebulous “credible threats” and “increased chatter,” TSA strip searches, arrests of deadly, hidden “sleeper cells” with no evidence ever made available to the public.  So effective was the government/media propaganda that a majority of Americans rated terrorism as the number one issue facing the country, when the actual chance of being killed in a terror attack was far less than being killed by a piece of household furniture falling on them.
 
According to the government and the corporate media, there was one single reason for the attacks; the terrorists “hate us because of our freedom.”  That’s it.  We were told to believe that a bunch of Saudi Muslim religious fanatics on the other side of world got so angry about Americans running around having a great time doing what they pleased, that they came here to kill themselves while carrying out acts of mass murder.  Never a word was uttered that Bin Laden’s group was founded in response to; 1- the massive American military presence in Saudi Arabia that never ended after the Desert Storm war in 1991 and, 2 – American government support of Middle Eastern dictators that routinely torture and otherwise tyrannize their citizens; most notably, the hopelessly corrupt, decadent, and murderous Saudi royal family. Neither were we told that Bin Laden and his compatriots were products of the United States’ government’s meddling in Afghanistan in the 1980’s, or that the entire modern Muslim extremist movement began with the overthrow of our government’s BFF in the Middle East, the Shah of Iran, in 1979.  The CIA engineered the 1953 coup that overthrew the democratically elected premier of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddeq, and installed the Shah, who then spent decades as our staunch ally while simultaneously terrorizing and torturing his population.
 
After 9/11, the media and government went all-in on blind, rabid patriotism; “Support the Troops!” was the war cry as defense contractors, private mercenary companies, and scam artists made trillions from two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that accomplished exactly nothing of benefit to the American population, and shattered the lives of tens of thousands of well-intentioned and courageous military service members.  To say nothing of the three quarters of a million civilians killed in the so-called war on terror.  Meanwhile, Americans, the vast majority of whom do not even know someone in the military, cheered wildly and right on cue, to carefully choreographed surprise soldier homecomings on baseball fields and to marching soldiers with flags and rifles while warplanes screeched overhead at football stadiums.
 
None of these facts, of course, justify the murders carried out by Muslim terrorists over the past 50 years.  They do demonstrate however, the ways in which the government, in concert with a complicit media, systematically hide the fact that its actions and relentless spread of its military empire, engender resentment and hatred around the globe; and not just in the Muslim world.
 
Next, enter Donald Trump. Whatever you think of him, this pugnacious, often petty, and egotistic outsider in the Republican Party was a grave danger to both Republicans and Democrats and their financiers.  The invisible people who truly run the country viewed him as an existential threat to their continued positions of wealth and power. Among his worst sins, Trump made overtures to end the highly lucrative, 70-year-long (and counting) Korean War. Worse still for the military-industrial-congressional complex, he disrupted the NATO alliance by suggesting that the American taxpayers should not be paying to provide military defense for wealthy nations on the other side of the world.  As such, monumental efforts were made to remove him from office, using, among other things, phony “dossiers” and false stories of Russian tampering with election results.
 
Next came Covid-19; the greatest gift the gods bestowed upon America’s authoritarians since 9/11.  Our overlords learned that Americans were far more compliant and eager to display their obedience to any master than they could have hoped.  Even after nearly two years of the obviously overblown and media-driven hysteria over a virus with a survival rate well over 99 percent (for anyone with a sense of curiosity and an internet connection), most Americans enthusiastically embraced virtual martial law and the destruction of their nation’s social fabric and economy - except large corporations, which continued business-as-usual - along with indefinite house arrest, compulsory facial concealment, forced vaccinations, and censorship of any dissenting medical opinion.
 
As the Covid-19 narrative began to unravel a few months ago and midterm elections loomed on the horizon, the media dutifully started phasing out pandemic stories and dropping the breadcrumbs that would lead Americas away from Covid, and prepare them for the next crisis du jour.  With nearly perfect timing, Vladimir Putin, the former Soviet spy turned Russian dictator, launched an invasion of Ukraine.  Despite the seriousness and historic implications of the issue, the corporate media entertainment shows – touted as “news” – have not uttered a single substantive word regarding precisely why Putin is invading or what his rationale may be. 
 
Putin’s motivation may be linked to the aggressive expansion of the NATO alliance, which was created a lifetime ago to counter a threat from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; a country that ceased to exist thirty years ago.  Rather than disband the alliance after the fall of the Soviet state and the reduction of Russia to a third-rate power – albeit one with nuclear weapons – the United States instead led its NATO allies to expand, by enlisting the eastern European nations formerly under the control of the Soviets; bringing American troops, tanks, bombers, and missiles right up to Russia’s doorstep. Before yet another seven countries opted into NATO in 2004, Putin had repeatedly expressed a desire for closer ties to the west and even to join NATO. Maybe the dictator is concerned about the plan to bring Ukraine into the NATO alliance, ushering in more American military bases, troops, and weapons to the Russian frontier.  As recently as last June, in a communiqué issued after a NATO summit meeting, the alliance stated unequivocally that Ukraine, “…will become a member of the alliance…” (Paragraph 69).  Remember Putin’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 and his seizure of two breakaway provinces of that nation?  That invasion came two months after another NATO summit where membership for Georgia – on Russia’s southern border - was discussed.
 
Perhaps Putin is thinking of the American and British invasion of Russia following the end of World War I. Possibly he, along with many of his countrymen, are uneasy about the American military empire pressing against their western borders after the loss of 30 million citizens at the hands of European invaders in the world wars of the twentieth century.  This is to say nothing of the one million dead from the French invasion of 1812.  The government-media cabal has decided that you don’t need to know any part of the backstory to any event, whether it’s terror attacks, flu viruses, or wars. Today, “Dictator Putin Bad” is all you need to know and all you will be permitted to hear – and of course, “Support the Troops!”
 
Make no mistake, any unprovoked military attack against a sovereign country is, of course, a violation of international law and morally wrong (DISCLAIMER: Unless such action is undertaken by the United States against countries including but not limited to; Mexico, Nicaragua, Columbia, Venezuela, Haiti, Panama, Dominican Republic,Philippines, Kingdom of Hawaii, China, Serbia, Russia, Libya, Syria, Iraq).  Vladimir Putin is indeed, to paraphrase former President Trump, a “Bad hombre,” but there is far more to the story.
 
As we move into this next, never ending, cycle of crisis, remember that you are going to be lied to. Britain’s MI-6 intelligence agency ran a massive fake news and propaganda operation in the United States to get America to fight its second world war for them.  President Roosevelt and his Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, worked tirelessly to provoke the Japanese into attacking our naval forces in Hawaii[1], so that they could enter World War II and take over the British Empire.  No one in the media then or since has ever questioned why our military was occupying Hawaii and the Philippine Islands on the other side of the world in the first place.
 
During the first world war – it was called the Great War before we realized we’d have to start numbering them – the British also ran a sophisticated propaganda operation in the United States, eventually pulling our country into the greatest bloodbath in human history up to that time.  They were aided by President Woodrow Wilson - who saw the war as an opportunity to fulfill his destiny as savior of mankind, by congress - which worked on behalf of American bankers to ensure that they were repaid the billions loaned to the allied powers, the munitions makers - who were reaping towering profits from selling weapons, and a press that fed Americans a steady diet of lies[2].  The public was told the Lusitania sinking was a heinous crime (Which did not, by the way, trigger our entry into the war – that came two years later).  Americans were also never informed that the Lusitania was illegally transporting a massive cargo of war material and was armed with artillery.  Americans were not told that British ships were illegally flying flags of neutral nations – including the US – thereby making a mockery and an impossibility for German U-boats to obey rules on the seas pertaining to non-belligerent nations. Neither were Americans informed that the British had cut the transatlantic cable between the US and Germany, so that their government could not effectively communicate with the outside world.  Most shamefully, Americans were not informed of Britain’s illegal starvation blockade against Germany, which was killing tens of thousands of German women and children. The blockade, which continued for eight months after the armistice ended hostilities, starved to death more than 800,000 civilian non-combatants[3].  Winston Churchill – then First Lord of the Admiralty – stated it plainly, “The British blockade…avowedly sought to starve the whole population - men, women and children, old and young, wounded and sound - into submission.”  It was this blockade, and the resulting domestic political pressure placed on the German leaders that forced them to resume unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917 after they had previously acceded to American demands for an end to the practice. None of this information was provided to Americans by their free press.
 
In 1898, America launched a war to seize the waning Spanish Empire’s territories of Puerto Rico, Cuba, The Philippines, and Guam after a US warship, the USS Maine, exploded in Havana harbor and the government falsely blamed it on the Spanish.  “Remember the Maine!” was the war cry then.  The press faithfully ginned up public support for colonial conquest by writing false stories of Spanish aggression and atrocities against civilians.  As newspaper mogul William Randolph Hurst told his photographer in Cuba, “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”  If you think anything has changed in the last 124 years, you are deluding yourself.
 
When our government wanted to begin the process of expanding its military empire into the Middle East, former CIA asset Saddam Hussein of Iraq, provided a pretext by invading the tiny emirate of Kuwait.  In order to get Americans, who were largely indifferent to the event, behind launching a war to eject the Iraqi military, the Kuwaiti government financed a massive, multi-million dollar, carefully orchestrated public relations campaign directed at the American Public by the New York marketing firm, Hill & Knowlton.  Public hearings were arranged with the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, whose Democrat and Republican co-chairs were close associates of Hill & Knowlton. The two politicians were recipients of campaign contributions from the firm and their caucus’ offices were housed in the Hill & Knowlton headquarters building in Washington, DC at a discounted rent.
 
Some of you may remember the tearful testimony of a fifteen-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only as “Nayirah,” about brutish Iraqi soldiers stealing incubators from a Kuwait hospital and tossing dozens of infants on the floor to die a slow death.  This horrific tale was used dozens of times in speeches in congress and by President Bush the First to justify American military intervention. Turns out that Miss Nayriah was reading a Hill & Knowlton-prepared script and that she was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the United States. Her testimony was a complete fabrication– what we used to call a “lie.”
 
Remember Saddam Hussein’s attempts to purchase yellow cake uranium from Niger for a nuclear weapon and his stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction?  Remember that was the reason we needed to launch a preemptive war and invade and occupy Iraq with absolutely no plan about what to do afterwards, or even so much as a Google search about the ethnic and religious divisions in the country?  Remember how the entire pretext for that war turned out to be a lie?
 
Remember when President Lyndon Johnson told the American people we needed to send hundreds of thousands of American teenagers to be maimed and killed in the Vietnamese civil war because our navy ships were “attacked” on August 4, 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin? Remember how it turns out no such attack ever happened?  Remember how the Pentagon Papers were later leaked to the New York Times and Washington Post and they proved that Johnson knew the war was unwinnable and he and his minions systematically lied to both the American public and congress for years, and then the government tried to send the leaker to prison for revealing the truth?
 
Remember when the Joint Chiefs of Staff, chomping at the bit to invade and occupy Castro’s Cuba (after a dry spell of nearly ten years without a war), submitted a proposal to President Kennedy to create a false pretext for an invasion?  Titled “Operation Northwoods,” the heads of America’s military proposed to carry out terrorist attacks against American citizens in the United States and blame it on Cuba’s government to get the American people to support a war.  They proposed blowing up an American navy ship to recreate the Battleship Maine pretext of 66 years earlier, hijacking and crashing American airliners, assassinating Cuban immigrants, faking attacks on the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and more. You most likely don’t remember because it’s never been talked about in the media or taught in schools.  You can read the actual memorandum with attached proposals here.
 
Your government – composed of the politicians you elect to make you feel as though you have a say in things, along with the unseen operatives whom you did not elect, lies to you in the interest of obtaining power and money for themselves and their patrons.  These lies, distortions, and half-truths are gleefully fed to you by their media courtiers - this is an unfortunate fact of life.  So, as you watch the empty 3-minute snippets of entertainment news, or the heart-rending personal stories about the hardships of a Yuri or a Katerina, just think carefully about what the government, media, and the people who control them want you to think – especially if an American ship explodes somewhere or you hear about Russian soldiers throwing babies on the floor…


[1]In just one example,Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson wrote in his personal diary that FDR "brought up the event that we were likely to be attacked perhaps next Monday [December 1], for the Japanese are notorious for making an attack without warning, and the question was what we should do. The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.  (See Henry Lewis Stimson Diaries, Nov. 25, 1941, Yale University Library, Manuscripts and Archives)

[2]Meyer, G. J. The World Remade: America in World War I. Bantam, an Imprint of Random House, a Division of Penguin Random House, 2017. 
 

[3]The Blockade of Germany after the Armistice, 1918–1919 Bane, S.L., 1942, Stanford University Press

In the morning hours of September 17, 1787, the members of the constitutional convention gathered in the old Pennsylvania State House on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia to sign the new Constitution of the United States of America.  They had debated and deliberated in secrecy since May and on this day people had begun to gather outside the state house to learn what the new constitution proposed.  In the sunshine of mid-afternoon, as Benjamin Franklin emerged from the signing session, a Mrs. Powell asked him, “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”  To which Franklin replied, “A republic - if you can keep it.”[1]
 
Historically, republics are fragile and tear themselves asunder in short order.  It is a tribute to the genius of the constitution’s authors that the American republic has lasted far longer than any other in human history; but its days may be numbered.
 
For Most Americans – to the extent they know or care about the history of their country – their understanding goes something like this; The British government was taxing and oppressing the American colonists, so we declared independence and there was a revolution fought by George Washington and we won.  We wrote a constitution that was a great charter of freedom.  There was another war in 1812 against the British about something-or-other and we won that one too.  Then there was a civil war because of slavery and President Lincoln saved the union and freed the slaves.  Then America conquered the west; there were a few dust-ups with Indians and Mexicans, a gold rush, and railroads.  Later America became a great industrial power and invented or perfected everything from electricity to the automobile to movies.  But all the great men who built these industries were evil, greedy, unfair, and were mean to their workers, so the government came in to make everything fair and safe.  Then America went over to Europe and saved the British and French from the mean and evil Germans in World War I.  There was a Great Depression in the 1930’s and Franklin Roosevelt saved the country by spending billions of dollars and creating make-work jobs for the masses. Then we went back to save Europe again in World War II because it’s America’s job to make sure every nation is free and democratic.  After we vanquished the evil Germans again and finally beat the Japanese, we spent the next 40 years fighting the spread of communism and fought wars in Korea and Vietnam, because we had to make sure those countries remained free too.  We are all free, safe, and have unemployment insurance if we lose our jobs, and Social Security and Medicaid waiting to pay all our bills after we turn 65.
 
This is the world everyone 55 or younger was born into and the extent of their understanding of how we got to this point in human and American history.  Most see this as some sort of inevitable progression; that America was always destined for greatness.  Most also believe that our current state of safety, comfort, and prosperity is permanent, but nothing could be farther from the truth.
 
All of us have had our birthright stolen from us.  Whether you consider yourself a liberal or conservative, your liberty as handed down to you from our forefathers has been eroded, stolen, and legislated away.  Whether you are a Democrat, Republican, or some other persuasion, unscrupulous, foolish, and corrupt politicians in both political parties have stuck you and your descendants with the bill for a virtually insurmountable national debt run up over the past few generations.
 
You have been told that you are free, but you are not.  If you are one of the roughly 50 percent of workers who pay income tax, an amount equal to every penny you earn from January 1 through around April 12 will be forcibly confiscated by the government to fund its wasteful activities or to simply hand over to someone else.  If you live in Connecticut and other high tax states, you will work as late as May 2 to pay your combined tribute to the federal and state government.[2]
 
A couple hundred years a ago, you could offer yourself as an indentured servant; in exchange for some service such as payment for passage to the American colonies, you would be required to be a slave to someone else for a set period of time. Today, American workers are required to labor for more than one quarter of each year to pay their taxes to the government, and the only thing they get in return are more taxes on everything from their gas and electricity, to their phone and cable television service.
 
Would you like to build a barn on your property?  You’re “free” to do so, but you will have to pay a sum of money to your local government bureaucrat for a permit and display that permit the way they tell you to.  Then you will have to allow unannounced intrusion onto your property by another clipboard-wielding government agent who will ensure that you build your structure the way they say it must be built, and if you don’t, they will fine you, jail you, and possibly even force you to tear down your building.  Once you have finished your barn, the local government will dispatch yet another bureaucrat to look over your improved property and determine how much more tax you should pay based on the increased value of your land. There may also be, unknown to you, state or federal restrictions about what, or whether you can build on your land, which could result in your being arrested at gunpoint, jailed, or fined millions of dollars (See Chapter 14). In addition, the merchant who sold you the materials for your barn was required, under penalty of law, to collect a government sales tax from you for the privilege of conducting your private business between one another.  You paid thousands of dollars in taxes on the vehicle you drove to the Home Depot, and a tax of anywhere from 25 to 40 cents per gallon of gas you burned to transport your materials.  On top of that, the gasoline, vehicle, and building materials were all more expensive because the companies that make them had to increase their prices to pay theirtaxes for their employees’ social security contributions, unemployment insurance premiums, as well as on their profits, supplies, and fuel.  
 
And you pay for all of this with the money that’s left after the government takes its cut of your paycheck.  You are also subject to arrest by the police, if, while driving to or from the Home Depot or the town clerk’s office, you have not properly paid the government for your license to drive your vehicle, or the registration fee, or have the wrong colored sticker in your window, or if you forget to buckle your seatbelt, or take a call on your cell phone.
 
And that’s just putting up a barn on property you already own.  Try building a factory, opening a restaurant, or hiring employees. We live under a suffocating web of overlapping laws, regulations, rules, taxes, surcharges and fees.  The notion that the government knows best, is entitled to the fruits of our labor, and should dictate every last detail of lives has become so ingrained in us, that we don’t even realize our freedom is all but gone.  
 
The American republic was born from a desire to be rid of a tyranny that was positively mild compared the oppression we endure today.  The spark that set off the Revolution was a series of unfair taxes levied against the American colonists by an English king and parliament that permitted them no real voice or formal representation.  Yet those taxes were a fraction of the crushing burden of taxation, fees and regulation Americans labor under today.
 
Until the creation of this great nation, only monarchies and dictatorships organized around race, religion, and language ruled the so-called civilized world.  The United States of America was the first nation-state in human history to be based upon a set of principles, rather than race, ethnicity, or religion.  These principles were laid out in eloquent simplicity by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence and codified in the Constitution of the United States.
 
Our founding fathers were promoting a truly radical notion; that governments are intended to serve the people, not the other way around; that the government derives its power from the consent of those it governs, not merely because it exists or commands the military; that government which governs least governs the best; that government authority should be divided to prevent consolidation of excessive power; that government’s decisions and functions should devolve to the lowest level possible, and be made by local and state governments whenever possible.  These concepts were not entirely new, but they had never been implemented in any significant way until the beginning of the American experiment.
 
 
Unfortunately, there are a growing number of Americans who have chosen not to learn the lessons that American liberty has provided.  Somewhere during the last century, our nation has lost its way.  We have long ago abandoned the ideals upon which the nation was founded - and the sacred document that defined the world’s first government of the people, by the people, and for the people – the Constitution of the United States of America.  ,Ithas long since become a quaint relic and nothing little more than a jumping-off point for ambitious politicians, petty bureaucrats,  and imperial judges.

A Fundamental Misunderstanding of the Role of Government
 
The only legitimate role of government is to preserve the liberty of the people.  This is the very foundation of the American Revolution.  The Declaration of Independence said it plainly; “All men are created equal…they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.”
 
America was destined to go wrong when its people began to forget the most important corollary to the declaration of human liberty that was the philosophical heart of the revolution.  That corollary is that government, by its very nature is prone to become abusive of the people and their liberty.  Government is a necessary evil, not a force for social progress.
 
Once we started down the path leading away from the constitutionally limited government of our founding, it was only a matter of time before we would find ourselves in precisely the cesspool of public corruption and debt we wallow in today.  First, we began granting public money and special privileges to politically connected railroad companies, oilmen, and industrialists, then we began to dabble in the favorite hobby of European monarchs – colonialism.  Finally, we became so powerful, and thought our government so wonderful, that we decided we could save all our citizens from any form of hardship, and then save the entire world from themselves.
 
Something happened to America along the way.  We forgot the warnings of our forefathers.  We forgot that government has a life of its own; that it is akin to a living organism that grows and in so doing devours freedom.  We thought that we could use the government to cure disease, stop bigotry, end poverty, and rid the entire planet of tyranny by giving it ever-increasing amounts of power – all without imperiling our liberty. We forgot that although our constitution created the best form of government yet devised, it was written for the express purpose of strictly limitingthe size and power of the central government.  We forgot Jefferson’s warning that, “…it would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism.”[3]
 
So today, the citizens who still believe in the constitution and in the principles of the revolution find themselves with nowhere to turn.  The entire premise of the political debate in America was ceded to the statists and collectivists long ago.  Our politicians do not argue about the proper role of government or constitutional restrictions on the federal government.  It is simply accepted that the massive, bloated monstrosity of a central government in far-away Washington, DC has a role to play in each and every aspect of our lives; from how many hours we can work to what foods we eat.  Few Americans have ever even read the constitution and do little more than shrug when they discover that our federal government disregards its rules every day.
 
Our presidential candidates talk about all the things they are going to do for the American people; lower gas prices, lower food prices, “invest” in clean or green or alternative energy, fix our schools, repair our roads and bridges, rebuild cities, raise or lower taxes, provide housing, disaster relief, food, medicine, and clothing, encourage the arts, restructure immigration, cure disease, start wars, and bail out faltering companies.  Not oneof those things is part of the duties and powers of the president as described in the constitution – not one.  Some of them, such as raising or lowering taxes and starting wars, are the job of the congress.  Most however, are not within the constitutional responsibility of any branch of the United States government.  Yet, again, this glaring disconnect goes unquestioned and unnoticed. 
 
Americans turn to government for food stamps, rent, heating assistance, unemployment payments, worker’s compensation benefits, child care, mental counseling, and even to referee their domestic squabbles. Theyhave been conditioned for decades to look to the government for answers to every conceivable problem.
 
During the 2008 Democrat presidential primaries in Iowa, CNN reporter Jessica Yellin said that she found “refreshing” the seriousness with which Iowa voters approached the candidates, and that that they “…feel entitled to ask, ‘how are you going to fix my life?’”[4]
 
These are American citizens – descendants of men and women who conquered a continent, built transcontinental railroads, invented everything from vaccines to prevent fatal disease to light bulbs and computers; who learned how to fly, won two world wars, defeated global communism, and walked on the moon. Now they ask petty politicians to fix their lives. 
 
Every vote of the national legislature and every stroke of the president’s pen should not, and was never intended to have, a dramatic, immediate effect on the lives of ordinary Americans.  Our federal government was created to offer a common defense and provide for a uniform currency and free trade among the states, not to dictate high school curricula, provide student loans, offer vaccinations, protect spotted owls, or debate how much of your own money you should be permitted to keep.
 
America has no functioning constitution; we have come loose from our philosophical moorings and drifted into a swift current leading us into a socialist-collectivist nightmare. This conclusion is unavoidable for anyone who knows what that document says and looks at our federal government today.  The federal legislature that was given eighteen specific things that it could do, now seeks to micromanage every aspect of our lives.  Our imperial congress tells the states what speed limits they must set on their own roads, how much alcohol they may allow their own citizens to consume before driving, and even how much water their toilets can use. 
 
Today, every issue of society is seen not only as a “public policy” issue, but one that should be addressed by the central imperial authority in Washington, DC.  The state governments that created the federal government have been reduced to nothing more than administrative districts; functionaries carrying out the dictates of their masters on Capitol Hill.  The federal leviathan sucks up the wealth of the productive citizens of each state, while the states in turn clamor and crane their necks like baby birds in the nest, waiting for their federal mother to regurgitate some of the sustenance back into their mouths.  This is not the system laid out in the constitution.
 
The constitution did not die recently, nor did it die as the result of one particular stroke of legislation or from the election Barack Obama or Donald Trump to the presidency.  It died a long, slow death from a thousand wounds.  There were certain points along the way where significant events tore down its bulwarks intended to protect us from an out-of-control government, and they will be chronicled in the following chapters. Our founders understood that the normal course of events is for governments to become what ours has – an insatiable monster that no longer serves to safeguard the rights of the people, but that instead views citizens as wards who must be commanded and controlled for their own good, and whose duty it is to serve the government so that it may carry out its good works.  As Thomas Jefferson once said, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”[5]
 

In 1845, the renowned classical liberal theorist Frédéric Bastiat wrote eloquently about the foolishness of investing the machinery of the state with so many hopes for perfecting society,
 
“Is there a state apart from the people? Is there a human foresight apart from humanity? …Nothing can be more foolish than to found so many hopes upon the state, which is simply to take for granted the existence of collective science and foresight, after having set out with the assumption of individual imbecility and improvidence.”[6]
This simple yet brilliant analysis explodes in just a few words the entire premise of progressive socialist doctrine, which can be boiled down to this; that is that society is composed of dummies incapable of caring for themselves and providing for their future, but that somehow a government made up of people drawn from that very same society will be able to plan and provide for every citizen.  
Witness the thirty-minute Barack Obama campaign commercial in the fall of 2008, where we met Rebeca Johnston of Missouri.  She has three children, drives a Ford SUV, lives in a nice home, and her husband works at a local tire plant.  Yet, her story is presented as one of desperation; her husband has had to delay knee surgery and “has to stand all day” at work.  She shows us her refrigerator – filled with food – but laments that shelves reserved for each family member’s snacks have less than they once did.  Mrs. Johnston then says something that should send a chill up the spine of any real American: “I think everybody’s the same, that they’d like to see an end in sight to all the worry and the chaos of everyday living.”[7]  Not only does she look to a centralized government to provide knee surgery for her husband, and snacks for her refrigerator, and relief from having to care for her own affairs - but everybody she knows thinks the same way.
 
This is the same America that was the first nation on Earth to be founded upon the ideal of liberty; that conquered an entire continent; that endured a bloody civil war; that has fought for the freedom of others and left the graves of its soldiers on four continents; the nation that invented electric light, television, the airplane, atomic power, the personal computer, the Internet, and put the first human being on the surface of the Moon;  The same America that defeated the British Empire, the Japanese Empire, the Fascists, the Nazis, and the Soviet communists. And now we are a nation of whiners that yearn for someone to rescue us from the worry and chaos of everyday living?
  
America stands not a crossroads, but at the edge of an abyss.  It was a long road getting here, but we are nearing the end. Understanding how we got here can help us find our way back.  The process was slow and subtle, carried out quietly and stealthily.  But it wasn’t some dark conspiracy concocted by agents of evil meeting in basements and smoke-filled rooms.  For the most part, the constitution has been subverted right out in the open, by deliberate misinterpretation, through appeals to charity and altruism, and the natural tendency of governments to grow.  This process has been aided by genuinely well-intentioned politicians and others who, lacking historical perspective or the ability to think critically, failed to see where the road of big government leads. Even schemes hatched in secret conspiracies were openly discussed and debated prior to becoming law.
 
People seeking to increase the power of government do so most often under two pretenses - during times of real or perceived emergency, and in the pursuit of some “greater good.”  Famed Supreme Court Justice and legal scholar Louis Brandeis once said “The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”[8]    
 

In many ways, this tendency is almost irresistable.  Evil and designing men have always sought power for their own pleasure, but the well-meaning often seek power in an effort to correct societal problems, such as helping the poor or ending racism.  In America, we ironically became the victim of our own successful experiment in ordered liberty.  As America grew in prosperity and strength, we became more confident. That confidence grew into conceit, and we began to no longer view our system of government as virtuous because it was strictly limited, but rather started to dream up ways it could be used for good; to fix all of mankind’s problems and spread freedom around the world.  We forgot the most important philisophical underpinning of the American Revolution – that government is, by its very nature, dangerous.  
 
Thomas Jefferson warned us that, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” Those of us who endeavor now to save it, must understand that Jefferson was not merely referring to external enemies, but to the insidious and relentless encroachment on the liberty of Americans by their own government.

 


[1]Quoted in- Asketill, Robert. "Understanding the Difference Betwen a Democracy and a Republic” The London Evening Post CO." The London Evening Post. 6 Aug. 2011. Web. 09 May 2012.

[2]"America Celebrates Tax Freedom Day." Tax Foundation.org. The Tax Foundation. Web. 17 Jan. 2012.

[3]Jefferson, Thomas. The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia: a Comprehensive Collection of the Views of Thomas Jefferson Classified and Arranged in Alphabetical Order under Nine Thousand Titles Relating to Government, Politics, Law, Education, Political Economy, Finance, Science, Art, Literature, Religious Freedom, Morals, Etc.Ed. John P. Foley. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1900. Print.

[4]Finklestein, Mark. "Ponytail Guy Lives: 'How Are You Going to Fix My Life?' | NewsBusters.org." NewsBusters.org. Newsbusters, 24 Dec. 2007. Web. 06 Jan. 2012.

[5]Jefferson, Thomas. The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia: a Comprehensive Collection of the Views of Thomas Jefferson… Ed. John P. Foley. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1900. Print.

[6]Bastiat, Frederic. "Economic Sophisms." The Bastiat Collection. Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig Von Mises Institute, 2011. 413. Ludwig Von Mises Institute Literature Library. Ludwig Von Mises Institute, 17 Mar. 2011. Web. 8 May 2012.

[7]"American Stories, American Solutions: 30 Minute Special." YouTube- Broadcast Yourself.Barackobamadotcom, 20 Oct. 2008. Web. 06 Mar. 2011.

[8]Quoted in Hayak, F. F. The Constitution of Liberty: The Definitive Edition. Vol. 17. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2011. Print.

This week witnessed one of the most dramatic diplomatic moments in modern memory.  North Korean President Kim Jong-un came to the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea and, with a beaming smile, stepped across the Military Demarcation Line as he shook hands with South Korean President Moon Jae-in - becoming the first leader of North Korea ever to set foot upon South Korean soil.  That event and subsequent discussions between the two leaders has raised the first real hope for a resolution to the 65-year war in decades.
 
Contrary to popular understanding, the Korean War has never ended; an uneasy truce was declared in 1953 and a demilitarized zone was established between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in the north and the Republic of Korea (ROK) in the south. The armistice froze the existing front line of combat operations, which at the time intersected the 38th parallel – the original border before the war began with North Korea’s invasion of the south.  Since that time, heavily armed US and South Korean armies have stood facing the North Korean People’s Army and continued to menace and not infrequently kill one another. America still maintains a garrison of around 25,000 military personnel on the peninsula.
 
The meeting of the two Korean leaders at the Joint Security Area in the DMZ was all the more poignant given the violence that has occurred there and all along the border throughout the interminable war.  Hundreds of Koreans and Americans have perished in conflicts and incidents along the DMZ.  These include incursions by the North Koreans building massive tunnels under the DMZ, and an effort to assassinate South Korean President Park Chung Hee in 1968. In 1976, North Korean troops hacked two American soldiers to death with axes when they attempted to trim a tree in the southern area of the DMZ. (In an ironic twist, the US orchestrated a massive show of force following the murders and moved in to eliminate the tree.  One of the South Korean soldiers who participated in that successful operation was none other than Moon Jae-in.)  
 
The meeting between Presidents Kim and Moon has followed a rapid series of diplomatic surprises, including the impending summit between Kim and President Trump, and recent secret meeting between the CIA director and Kim in the DPRK.  In addition to the historic handshake and photo-op at the DMZ, the talks between the two men have reportedly produced equally remarkable developments; including a reported offer by Kim to shut down his nuclear weapons program in exchange for an end to the war and US pledge of non-aggression. While the North Koreans have a long history of perfidiousness and empty rhetoric, the events of the past months seem to offer greater promise of a favorable outcome.
 
While the ruling political cartel of Republicrats argue about who is to take credit for the recent developments and snipe on cable news about who knows best how to proceed, Americans should take this moment to re-think (or rather think about for the first time) our government’s self-appointed role as world policeman and sole arbiter of right and wrong.  Whether President Trump’s aggressive tone, sending his CIA director to meet with Kim, and exchange of playground insults with the North Korean dictator have produced the result, or whether President Moon deserves all the credit for his determined efforts to foster better relations, is not nearly as important as ending this vestigial proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union – a state which ceased to exist a quarter century ago.
 
Presidents from both parties have failed to stop the North Koreans from obtaining the atomic bomb and been repeatedly bamboozled by both Presidents Kim Jong-un and his predecessor and father, Kim Jong-il.  The frightful and evil nature of the North Korean regime is undeniable, but socialist and other tyrannical governments around the world have atrocious human rights records, and many of them have been or currently enjoy status as American allies.  Moreover, our bankrupt federal government cannot afford to police the world and impose the glories of American-style liberty at the barrel of a gun.  
 
Regardless of whether of our 65-year deadlocked war against the North Korean and Chinese communist forces was justified or necessary in 1950, the South Koreans have long since outgrown their need for a US military presence.  The south has a GDP 36 times as large as the north and a powerful military armed with the latest technology.  The North does have a 2-to-1 advantage in troops and artillery pieces, but its equipment and air forces are hopelessly obsolete.
 
Since the Clinton Administration, the dispute between the US and North Korea has centered around the North’s efforts to create a nuclear weapons program and the sanctions imposed on North Korea in retaliation.  The north has long feared a US-led invasion from the south – a fear greatly exacerbated by the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and our undeclared war against Libya.  Like Iran and other states under continuing rhetorical threats of military aggression from the US government, the North Korean Stalinists have sought The Bomb as insurance against a US attack.  Think former UN Ambassador and current National Security Advisor John Bolton (or Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, et al.) repeatedly calling for attacks on Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, and Syria either explicitly or using the ubiquitous vague threat, “military option” and the proverbial “all options are on the table.” 
 
While North Korean communists are notoriously inscrutable, and their possession of nukes is appalling, it is not hard to understand Mr. Kim’s desire for such an insurance policy.  The US has never attacked a state possessing a nuclear bomb or nearing completion of one.  Further, even though Libyan dictator Muamar Qaddafi voluntarily gave up his WMD program under US pressure in 2003, America bombed his military into rubble and he wound up being dragged through the streets, viciously beaten, humiliated, and shot to death by rebels less than eight years later; with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton famously laughing aloud on camera upon receiving the news of his death, saying, “We came, we saw, he died.”
 
The position of every Republicrat administration boils down to a standoff where the communists say they don’t trust America and want an end to sanctions and the war before denuclearization, while the American government does not trust the North Koreans and demands an end to their nuclear program before substantive discussions can take place. Meanwhile all previous US presidents have ruled out ever talking with the North Korean president, as this would “give legitimacy” to a totalitarian ruler; in the belief that being photographed with the elected king of America lends unwarranted gravitas to tin-pot dictators. This is our government’s position despite the fact that US presidents have glad-handed with mass-murderers and dictators for 75 years; from Indonesia’s Suharto, to General Pinochet of Chile, General Branco of Brazil, Shah Reza Pahlavi of Iran, The Islamist kings of Arabia, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania, South Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem, and even former South Korean President and killer of 100,000 civilians, Park Chung Hee.
 
So, regardless of membership in either wing of the Republicrat cartel, or one’s personal opinion of the current president’s personality, hair color, or Twitter etiquette, Americans should press their government to put an end to this war, and eliminate the nuclear threat from the DPRK though negotiations and removing the north’s perceived need for such weapons, by extricating ourselves from a civil war that has brought such deep and prolonged sorrow to the Korean people.  Perhaps then we can begin to talk about an exit strategy for World War II and pull our troops out of Germany and Japan 73 years after the conflict, and 26 years after the end of the Cold War.