Empire, the State, and Republican Government
That We Not Lose Sight of What It Means to be Great
I understand that there is reason to surrender all hope, and I understand that there is reason to be overly optimistic. Important, however is that we do not surrender, and that we do not let down our guard still again, for there is simply too much at stake. Important is that we err on the right side, for we will surely err. It is our nature.
The current President of these United States is in a position like no other in recent history. On the one hand, he has a stiff wind behind him that has filled his sail and is propelling him forward. We, the People, are that wind. On the other hand, there are those at the helm who care only that he wins, and who will take advantage of every cloudy night to steer our President and our nation in the wrong direction. The Lindsey Grahams, Ted Cruzes, Tim Scotts, and Mitt Romneys of the Senate, and many of the rank and file of the House Republican Convention who have joined the Trump Train and are headed by Mike Johnson — to say nothing of the D.C. lobbyists who would occupy the wheelhouse of the great American juggernaut.
Our job is to insure that the wind is sustained, and that when the President veers off course that he returns to the true path. But truly, what is that path?
We have agreed that it is America First, but already we are failing in this regard, because surely “Israel or else” is not America first. We have also agreed that it is to Make America Great Again, but have we agreed as to what it means to be great?
Empire and liberty are an oxymoron by definition, for empire is the will of one state imposing its will over that of other states while exploiting the national vanity of its own citizenry. An imperial state cajoles, if you will, its own citizenry into believing that its sacrifice for the state, is a testament to the greatness of the state’s citizenry. In so doing, the state is enriched, its citizenry is impoverished, and the glory of the state replaces the prosperity of the nation. Our current president has promised us prosperity, and he appears to be delivering, but we must be cautious, for in the end we have elected the head of an empire.
If properly constructed, a republic seeks to minimize the imposition of the state, and to maximize the freedom and prosperity of its citizenry who have created the state, or at minimum, maintain the integrity of the state to defend themselves against other states that would impose their will on them.
Now, one can argue that some amount of imperial force is necessary to maintain a republic, for no amount of defense can succeed in the absence of offense in the midst of interstate competition. But, this is the catch. For those who denounce empire, must then denounce state competition, and those who denounce state competition are the same who would cajole us into believing that one-world government is the “final solution”. This is the false promise of communism — no matter its source. It the idea that one global state should rule over one global citizenry in the absence of interstate competition. It is a fool’s errand — an illusion propagated by those who would abuse the good will of humanity in the belief that they know what is best for everyone and the planet itself.
It is based on the naïve belief that those in power will never become habituated to their power. We have only to look what has happened to our own United States of America over time to understand how truly dangerous this idea is. No, we do not have to point our finger to the Chinese Communist Party to understand; we have only to look carefully into the mirror of our own diachronic progression.
Each star of the blue field of our nation’s flag is suppose to represent a self-contained, sovereign republic that has yielded certain of its sovereign rights to a centralized authority called the United States Government. These sovereign rights are listed in Article I, Section VIII of our nation’s basic law. They were surrendered for the purpose of securing the sovereignty of each State through a common defense and a shared customs union. Over time these sovereign rights have become increasingly eroded and have been ceded to the central authority that is the government of the American state.
Simultaneously, the sovereign rights of each citizen have been similarly eroded as the United States Government has grown ever larger. We have only to examine carefully how each amendment to the first ten of our Constitution — our so-called Bill of Rights — has been eroded. But, the matter is more severe. Parents have been forced to cede their right to raise their own children. We have become pin cushions to mandated drugs. And, we now stand by while our own sisters desecrate their wombs in the name sexual “liberation”. The taxes once levied to sustain our various local governments, State and Commonwealth governments, and the government of the American state, whose job it was to defend our person and our property, are now used to tell us what we can and cannot do. Our laws are no longer designed to make it easier for our judges to adjudicate our differences, rather they are used to extract from us our wealth, constrain our behavior, and provide for others with whom we may or may not share anything in common that is not imposed upon us by those who would take from us to sustain them and garner votes so that they can impose their will ever more forcefully. We have become pawns of power in the pursuit of pleasure.
We know in the market place that in the absence of competition, big business will trample us. As successful, small businesses become ever larger, they lobby our legislatures and Congress to stifle competition in the name of the greater good. In the absence of this competition, however, those who once purchased their goods and services to improve their own standard of living and eventually made them wealthy are forgotten, and become objects of consumption to be manipulated and cajoled into buying ever more while the quality of what they purchase is diminished and the service received ever more constrained. So, how is it that we can expect a state with a monopoly power on the use of force to behave in the absence of competition, if not many times worse?
Words that we seldom hear from the Declaration of our nation’s founding fathers are the following:
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light or transient causes, and accordingly, all experience hath shewn that mankind are disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Now keep in mind, those who signed the declaration were at the top of American society at the time of their writing. Today, those at the top suffer very little in comparison. In fact, their “plight” is non-existent, or is, perhaps better stated, is our failure to buy into their chicanery.
No, it is We, the Common Folk, at the bottom who are suffering at the hand of those at the top, while they think how best to control and exploit us for their own personal gain. What is worse, a very large portion of us in the bottom half have been bought by those at the top through a system of ingratiating entitlements that are a mere pittance of what those at the top regularly dispose.
In contrast, We, Americans, have been taught not to begrudge those of great wealth, and there is surely wisdom in the words, “Thou shalt not covet”. So, we turn on those who receive the entitlements and fail to understand that those who have taught us not to covet are using them to divide, conquer, and better exploit us— we, who do not covet, but aspire to obtain what is ours on our own.
Then too, we are repeatedly told that elections are won and lost by the ability of our government to deliver economically. What we too often forget is that few in government today have ever created a company and provided jobs that were not achieved by destroying jobs in the private sector through the taxation of our wages and the profits of those who employ us. Most of government is composed of bureaucrats with college degrees who have either failed in the private sector or who have entered into the public sector to spend the earnings of others obtained in the very markets that those in government have chosen to avoid. It takes a certain arrogance to believe that one can better spend the wealth of those who have earned it.
No, this is not to say that everyone who enters into government is somehow arrogant. Many like to serve, but those at the top like to manage and control. It is these of whom we should all be most wary — no matter their stripe, star, spot, or color.
In case you missed it on the 4th, Part III of “A Call for the Restoration of Monetary Order” is now complete.
In liberty,
Roddy A. Stegemann, First Hill, Seattle 98104
Author of Mount Cambitas - The Story of Real Money, “A Call for the Restoration of Monetary Order” (Part I, Part II, and Part III), and the Substack series “Let’s End the Money Racket”.