Humanity, America, and I

"When in the Course of Human Events ..."

The Declaration of Independence is much more than a declaration of separation or even secession, if we were to jump ahead eight-five years; it is also a declaration of a philosophy of nations, the nature of their governance, and their relationship with the rest of humankind. That our Founding Fathers recognized humanity as an entity of which they felt themselves a part is memorialized in the phrase,

“When in the course of human events …”

Now it is true that there were no female signatories to either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of the United States, and that the word mankind appears three times in the Declaration of Independence. In those days, however, the social roles of male and female were far stricter than they are today, and it was the duty of men to defend the family hearth and homeland. Indeed, it was the goal of our Founding Fathers to create — so to speak — a new homeland.

No, the land and the people would remain the same, but the way in which they would be governed would change. There would be “new guards”.

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations
pursuing invariably the same object
evinces a design to reduce them to absolute despotism;
it is their right, it is their duty,
to throw off such government, and
to provide NEW GUARDS for their future security.”

In other words, the emphasis on man- over humankind was surely the result of the issue at hand, when not a reminder of the stricter social roles that were assigned to men and women during the age of our nation’s separation from Great Britain and founding.

Accordingly, let us not become distracted by notions of a “patriarchal society” and the respective social roles of men and women in our effort to understand the relationship between the individual, his nation, and humanity that is the substance of this brief tract. Finally, although I am human, I am also male, and write from a male perspective. I can no more change my sex, than you or I can change the color of our skin. Furthermore, my mind is not separate from my biological self despite the fact that my mind and body sometimes go their separate ways.

Accordingly, I will use the pronouns he and him, and the possessive adjective his, when referring to anonymous human beings — including myself — no matter their biological sex — and this, despite the chromosomal confusion that can sometimes occur, but rarely ever takes place.¹

Americans were, by the way, not the first people in the Western World to separate from another people and form a republic of their own.² Already in the late 16th century the Dutch peoples began to throw off the yoke of the Spanish Empire, eventually declared themselves separate and sovereign, and formed Europe’s second republic after the Swiss. In English it was called the United Dutch Provinces or Dutch Republic. Important is that within less than a century the United Dutch Provinces had become the largest trade empire that the world had ever known, and they were among the first to settle the North American continent.

The Dutch were eventually superseded by the British, and it was in this moment in the Western World when real money (silver and gold specie) was replaced with statutory counterfeit and the greatest theft in the history of humankind became institutionalized.³ I strongly believe that this transition is, in part, why we hear so little about the Dutch Empire in American classrooms today.

Now, there are very diverse opinions about the nature of a state (written small), but most everyone agrees that a state is a territory whose people are governed by a smaller group of people called government who reserve the right to tax those over whom they govern and wield a monopoly right over the use of force.⁴ What once made, and continues to make — well, at least on paper — America unique among other states in the world is the sovereignty of the American people and their partial right to the use of force.

In the American philosophy of governance government rights are philosophically — and potentially legally — derived from the rights of the people that are “endowed” and “unalienable”.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident
that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed with certain unalienable rights, …”

In other words our various governments — State, federal, and eventually local (local governments are granted charters by our various State and commonwealth governments — cannot assume any rights of their own that “We, the People” do not grant them. And, once these rights are granted, we have the right to take them away. We, the People, are the first of three sovereigns — the American people, our respective State and commonwealth governments, and the US Government.⁵ In effect, the distribution of rights is from the bottom up beginning with the individual rights of Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of happiness, and finishing with the national sovereignty of the US Government that represents the American people and our respective States and commonwealth governments overseas.

It is this bottom-up, de jure sovereignty — well, at least on paper — that makes America unique on the world stage. It is also this sovereignty of the American People that the European Union, the People’s Republic of China, the United Nations (WHO, UNICEF, etc.), and their various corporate buddies — especially, the central bankers — at the World Economic Forum (WEF) are seeking to destroy. And, they will succeed, if we do not stand up and prevent them.

You, I, and our neighbors — the individuals of our nation — are the primary sovereigns, and we relinquish — namely, sacrifice — certain of our individual, and by extension collective rights, to our State, commonwealth, and federal (national) governments in an effort to provide social and market order so that American society can flourish and prosper. In other words, our States and commonwealths, are not provinces of the US Government. Both — our State and commonwealth governments and our federal (national) government — are now and always answerable to the American people. This said, it is up to Us, the People, to insist on our sovereignty. We should not expect government to do it for us.

This is not what is being taught in our schools, and must be taught in such a manner that we juxtapose clearly — however, painful it may be — the reality in which we live today with the American ideal that is the very legal basis of our own society. We must stop teaching the American ideal as a lofty, esoteric dream of the past, but as the achievable reality that it once was.

Alas, America is both a philosophy of governance (our Declaration of Separation) and a body of law (the US Constitution) that has been perverted with the passage of time.

Now, each American citizen is a human being, an individual of the human species. Each of us shares with all of humanity certain characteristics that make us different from all other animals and living organisms. Additionally, each of us is unique and sovereign in his own right; this is what it means to be an individual in American society. In the Christian faith, that once formed the moral basis of American society, and for many still does, it is designated as the free will.

More importantly in the context at hand, between each of us and all of humanity is the state (written small) that governs over us with our permission. Our Founding Fathers wrote, and together they fought, to insure that the individual rights of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” would prevail in the territory occupied by the American people. The United States of America (USA, USA, USA) that eventually resulted was based on the notion

“… that to secure these rights
governments are instituted by men
deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed, …”

In other words, our respective governments — State, commonwealth, and federal, as well as the local governments incorporated by our State and commonwealth governments — are the servants of “Us, the People”. Their allegiance is to “us”, not humanity, the State of Israel, or any other nation, universal cause, or religious faith. This is the notion of America First when applied to American government.

As individuals, on the other hand, our first allegiance is to each other, our families, and in many cases even humanity with whom each of us enjoys a natural affinity and consequent allegiance. This latter allegiance, however, should be resolved primarily through our individual and collective actions beyond the scope of government. Within the scope of government, on the other hand, no action should be taken that moves contrary to our own self-interest as a nation.

The allegiance of our elected officials must be first and foremost to “Us, the People” of America. Only when “We, the People,” agree through democratically held elections that our government should act on behalf of humanity and those of other nations, should our government do so, and only in those instances where it serves well the “Safety and Happiness” of our own American state. Our Founding Fathers wrote,

“… that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends,
it is the right of the people to alter, or to abolish it, and to institute new government
laying it foundation on such principles, and
organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely
to insure THEIR safety and happiness.”

Obviously, our Founding Fathers believed that all nations should be founded on the same principles. Having worked and studied for long periods of time in eight countries on three continents, I believe strongly that, in this regard, our Founding Fathers were most presumptuous. The rights and duties of the individuals of other states is not ours to decide. This said, We, the People, would be foolish not to support others who believe as do we. Notwithstanding, any help that our government offers to other states must not conflict with our own “safety and happiness”. Indeed, this is our own philosophy of governance.

In other words, we have little business meddling in the internal affairs of distant lands whose cultures, histories, philosophies, and manner of thought are so alien to our own. A renown Swiss author of German poetry and literature named Gottfried Keller (1819-1890) wrote during the 19th century, while the nations of Europe were suffering much social, political, and economic turmoil.

“Kehr erst vor eigener Tür!”
Sweep your own doorstep first!

The contemporary American version of this same adage might be

Drain your own swamp,
before seeking to drain the swamps of others.

In liberty,

Roddy A. Stegemann, First Hill, Seattle 98104
Author of Mount Cambitas — The Story of Real Money

p.s. Six-hundred twenty-one days have passed since Donald J. Trump announced his presidential bid for the November 5, 2024 election. Exactly 100 days remain before the election. This is what we are up against.

1. As men are generally the more virulent of the two sexes and lack the nurturing ability of women, they were naturally tasked with the job of matching an abusive use of force with a corrective use of force in order to prevent further abuse — no matter its origin. Alas, it was then, as it should be today.

Rights and duties come together. Duties are sacrifices that the individual makes on behalf of the collective. Though our rights are unalienable our duties should, in most cases, be voluntary and rewarded with privileges when properly carried out — privileges that can be easily taken away when the individual fails to carry out his duties as expected. It is in this way that we remain free to pursue our own happiness. Privileges are different from rights in that the former should never be viewed as entitled or endowed.

2. Today, we tend to think of the Western world as any technologically advanced country with a system of competing political parties and elected governments that rule over their respective competing markets through the imposition of fiat currency. So, by this measure Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are all part of the Western world.

In this essay, however, the Western world refers to those nations that once formed a part of the Hapsburg Dynasty and trace their cultural and political origins to the ancient traditions of the Greek and Roman empires, and the Christian faith. These include all of Western, Central, Northern, and important parts of the Southern and Eastern Europe, and, of course, the Americas that were largely settled and transformed by Europeans. All of these countries were strongly influenced by the Spanish, Dutch, French, and English empires, the European Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment, the Napoleonic wars, and the last hurrah of the British Empire as it struggled to maintain its hegemony through the imposition of two World Wars. It was also in the Western world where Marxism took root, eventually dominated all of Eastern Europe, and will conquer the entire world, if we do not bring its infectious spread to a halt.

3. We are even worse off today, because fiat currency has replaced the statutory counterfeit of the so-called gold standard introduced by the British and the subsequent gold-exchange standard introduced by our worlds’ central bankers in the wake of World War I. What is worse, there is no one to blame for these corrupt innovations, but ourselves. Fiat currency was introduced to the world in a two-step process introduced by Franklin Delano Roosevelt who took us off the domestic gold standard in 1937, and by Richard Milhous Nixon who took us off the international gold standard in 1971. At least, under the system of institutionalized statutory counterfeit introduced by the British in 1694 we had a check on how much counterfeit could be produced. Today there is no check on the size of our money supply that is not economic disaster.

It is fiat currency that forms the financial basis of the Uni-Party that rules over our nation’s capitol and Us, the People, today and threatens the future of all humanity. Unfortunately, like CoVID-19 and mRNA injection that came after its introduction, the disease of fiat currency has spread around the entire world.

4. The primary role of government was then, as it should be today, to maintain the social order through the near monopoly right of the use of force. The phrase “near monopoly right” emphasizes the importance of the individual’s right to bear arms in order to preserve his “endowed”, “unalienable rights” to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that are clearly stated in the Declaration.

In other words, the individual reserves the right to self-defense, when the government is not present to defend him, or is seeking “to reduce” him “under absolute despotism”.

5. Our State and commonwealth governments derive their sovereignty, respectively, from the people of each State or commonwealth, and the US Government derives its rights from both the people of the United States of America (USA) and the governments of their respective States and commonwealths.