Sell Out and Take Back
The Future of the America First Movement (aka MAGA)
We have started on a journey whose path is very uncertain, but whose goal appears to be genuine. Our current leader on this journey is Donald John Trump, an old man of seemingly invincible stamina with enormous ambition and self-esteem who is making use of the power of the presidency in a manner perhaps not seen since Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. What is different is that the American state has grown much larger in size, and the entrenched bureaucracy that either Lincoln or Roosevelt faced was much smaller in their day. Unfortunately, both presidents contributed greatly to the bureaucracy with which President Trump and the America First movement are now faced.
Each of these three presidents came to power during critical times in our nation’s history. I will dwell only on the latter and ask for your patience.
President Trump’s largest following is in rural and small-town America that until recently had been abandoned by the national media. He also enjoys crucial, but much smaller support from Americans who live in large cities and have watched over the years as their standard of living has fallen. These latter have experienced not only a diminishment in their real material wealth, but also in their ability to enjoy what little of it remains. America’s urban centers are in a state of cultural and moral decay. Globalization and rapidly advancing technology have exacted a heavy toll on the way we interact and think about one another, and restoring America in our nation’s urban centers will be an enormous task on which we have just embarked.
Next year we will celebrate an important day in our nation’s history. Two-hundred-fifty years will have passed since the signatories to our Declaration of Independence agreed to risk their lives and fortunes and the lives and fortunes of others who would eventually be pulled into the confrontation between America and the greatest empire the world had ever known at the time. Little did any of these men realize that those who would succeed them would one day be viewed by much of the world in the same way that they viewed the British empire.
No, today our struggle is not to free ourselves from the grip of an external empire. For the empire against which we are faced is not a foreign state, rather it is a stateless society of global elites who view all of earth as its territory, and the armies of the nations of our world as its compliance and enforcement arm. This society of global elites is comprised of the international press corps, the heads of trans-national corporations, our world’s central bankers, renown academicians, the heads of foreign states and of international governing bodies such as the UN — to say nothing of the super rich.
Many of these elite head corporations whose gross revenue is larger than than the gross domestic product of entire nations. They can buy anyone who can be bought and deceive many more to do whatever they want including the hiding of truth, the telling of lies, and character assassination, if not outright murder. The members of this global society of elites who are elected public officials are severely compromised by their obligation to serve those who elect them on the one hand, and their allegiance to this society that has invited them into their midst, on the other hand. No matter one’s station in this global society, however, each is convinced that because of his intelligence, industry, accomplishments, and position that together they know what is best for humanity, and should therefore decide what is best for everyone else. They view democratic government as a failed system that is best employed to fool the people into believing that their voice matters as something more than a source of information whereby these self-appointed masters can better control their subjects.
The recent shouts of “No Kings” across America are not misplaced, but they are deeply misguided. On the one hand, they are in the spirit of our founding fathers who understood that no person in a position of power can be trusted. On the other hand, these shouts are undermining the single best opportunity that the world has had to right the floundering “Great American Experiment”. Since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 we have been teaching our children about how corrupt the American system has become. We were never provided, however, with a solution that has not been self-criticism and surrender to a “New World Order” headed by these stateless, global elites. As a result, the three most important tools at our disposal to deal with our nation’s corruption have themselves become corrupted — namely, our free press, our legal system, and our electoral system.
FREE PRESS: During the recent CoVID fiasco the cooperative relationship between our national and social media and the US Government was starkly revealed. Highly competent critics of public health policy at all levels of government were regularly censured, humiliated, or outright cancelled.
In a democratic society the truth about anything is always difficult to know, because everyone has something to hide and too often what is hidden comes at the expense of someone else. In the absence of a critical free press with the ability, willingness, and courage to investigate and reveal to the general public all sides of an issue, political campaigns that decide the leadership of democratically elected governments become little more than a shouting match with the wealthy in control of the volume. Unfortunately, this is what has occurred, and our political system has been gravely undermined in so doing.
JUDICIAL SYSTEM: Well over 90 percent of all criminal cases in the United States are decided in pleas bargains in which the defendant’s lawyer — often a public defense attorney paid by the government — and the State prosecutors office negotiate a deal behind closed doors to prevent the case from going to trial. Such deals require that the defendant confesses his guilt and cedes his right to a lawful trial. In return, he is rewarded with a greatly reduced conviction and punishment. The victim, on the other hand, is deemed a witness to his own travail and not allowed, as a result, to participate in the negotiation. Only upon the sentencing of his offender is he allowed to speak, but by this time the prosecution and the defense have already agreed to an “equitable” punishment that they present to the judge at the sentencing hearing. Although the judge has the power to change the proposed sentence within the boundaries of the conviction, he is not allowed to alter the conviction, and more often than not simply rubber stamps the proposed sentence.
There is no doubt that jury trials are expensive, but an appreciation for the law is crucial to a society that is based on the rule of law. Jury duty is the absolutely best way to serve this appreciation and maintain judicial awareness among the general public and thereby insure greater civility in society as a whole.
Jury duty has a profound effect on a juror, and his experience in the courtroom is naturally shared with others in his community after the trial has been completed. As a result, the community discusses issues of right and wrong, the difference between legal and moral justice — to say nothing of the behavior of their local public officials who have the greatest effect on their daily lives. This discussion goes far beyond the shallow theoretical discussions that one typically experiences in a high school classroom.
Under the current system of criminal justice the criminal is rewarded, the victim is further grieved, and the resulting injustice breeds contempt for the state (written small) by those who have been injured by the state’s negligence. Smaller crimes are no longer reported, or are reported without follow-up, and larger crimes result, as the deterrence of the state is thereby diminished. To soften the blow the state engages in the provision of other services that may or may not be appreciated by those who are compelled to pay for them or are otherwise negatively impacted by their provision. As a consequence, the alienation between the state and its citizens is magnified, and a new source of conflict and alienation emerges — namely, that between the Haves who pay taxes and the Have Nots who receive the benefits of the taxes paid. The corruption worsens. On the one hand, the state must preserve its tax base, and on the other hand, it must sustain its new role as the provisioner of wealth to those who cannot, or simply refuse to, contribute their service in the labor market. After all, it is through the supply of labor services that goods and services are provided, and it is through their provision that income is earned and an effective market demand for what is provided is created. Accordingly, special interest groups appear and lobby local government for special privileges in the payment of their taxes on the one hand, and for the receipt of special entitlements on the other. In so doing, the role of local government is elevated far beyond its primary duties, and it grows like a cancer on the freedom of its citizens.
ELECTOR PROCESS: Our elections are no better. America appears wedded to a two-party duopoly that is more ideological in nature than practical in implementation. The idea that one party is suppose to keep the other party in check only works when both parties are serving the people.
The democratic process in the United States has been turned on its head with the passage of time. Rather than the notion of a “necessary evil” that prevailed during the era of Thomas Paine and our founding fathers; we are taught in our schools today to perceive the state as a “benevolent good”. The emphasis is on government as the provisioner of goods and services as well as the misplaced notion that government can extend or contract our freedoms rather than defend our rights and maintain law and order.
Indeed, we have willingly and foolishly turned our individual fortunes over to the hands of the American state — no longer for the purpose of the defense of our individual person and property, but for the provisions of goods and services to others in the form of special interest and minority groups that become the focus of every new election rather than the well-being of the nation as a whole. For, it is these special interest groups that provide the votes purchased by our elected representatives in Congress at the expense of the general public.
Accordingly, an increasingly large portion of our nation’s citizenry has become dependent on government for their economic survival, and with this dependence our ability to control our government has become increasingly compromised. Indeed, rather than we, the consenting governed, controlling our government, we, the non-consenting governed, are now controlled. It is this attitude and reality that needs to change, and it can only occur, if we are each the master of his own livelihood. This is true liberty.
The primary purpose of our congressional and legislative bodies is to write laws that facilitate the courts’ ability to render justice — this, and settle arguments that effect the entire nation such as the decision to go to war. These bodies were never intended to tax and redistribute wealth and privilege according to the highest bidder. In the end, we, voters, have lost sight of the purpose of American government as conceived by our founding fathers. Is it no wonder that we are confused, and our nation is floundering.
In our neglect we have sold ourselves out, and must now take back what was originally ours or perish. The task will not be achieved without a fundamental change in the way that we view government and interact with each other vis-à-vis government. For the moment we are at an important impasse that the America First (MAGA) movement is seeking to dislodge.
We must first understand that our two-party system has failed us, and we must stop shouting at one another. Further, we must stop listening to those in Congress, our State legislatures, and local city and county governments that do the same. In short, we must stop engaging in political theater and become serious about our true plight.
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” (Parts I and II), the Substack series “Let’s End the Money Racket”.