a) Environmental top down (also known as authoritarian modern liberalism, liberal fascism, and "neo-Jacobinism," all of which describes what America has become today)
b) Environmental bottom up (also known as contemporary anarcho-libertarianism, this is a "sanitized," non-racialist, non-ethnic version of the American Old Right)
c) Genetic top down (also known as authoritarian racial nationalism, this includes German national socialism and Zionism.)
d) Genetic bottom up (I call this libertarian racial nationalism. This is also known as 19th century classical liberalism, the American Old Right, and Paleo-Conservatism)
e) Mutualism vs. Parasitism (Productive practices vs. criminality. The latter include political corruption, organized crime, and subversion).

Environmental top down

This article presupposes that the reader has already read my "Top Down vs. Bottom Up" discussion. In that article, I explain how "Environmentalism" essentially means "leftism." "Top down" typically means "more centralized" and involving "more government." As a line of intellectual analysis, the environmental top down viewpoint tends to look at social, economic, and political problems on an aggregate level. It tends to look to the government and other big organizational entities for solutions. It tends to view conflicts more in terms of competing factional and class interests as opposed to racial, religious, or ethnic groups, although the concept of a faction can sometimes overlap any of these latter categories, hence at times blurring the distinction between "left" and "right."

The "environmental top down" viewpoint on American history is the current "Establishment" viewpoint. It is consistently espoused by most major national media, government officials, government-funded think tanks, and publicly-funded grade schools and universities. The high priests of this viewpoint are typically called "modern liberals."

The "top down" part of this viewpoint holds that the growth in American government from around 5% to nearly 50% of GDP over the last 150 years has been a good thing. Adherents perceive the U.S. Government is a semi-divine repository of over two hundred years of accumulated wisdom and experience. If the ways of the Federal Reserve, Congress, Supreme Court, and Executive Office often seem mysterious (if not downright absurd or lacking in common sense at times), this is usually not because of some kind of major corruption, conspiracy, or highjacking by special interests, but simply because running a global super state necessarily involves innumerable complexities that can only be handled by the arcane wisdom of special experts, to include members of the Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg Group, etc. Furthermore, America requires continuous and massive regulation, supervision, and financial intervention by the Federal Government and Central Bank in almost every aspect of social and economic life in order for American society to function properly from main street to Wall Street. In other words, fascism is OK as long as we do it. It is OK as long as it reflects our own homegrown modern liberal ideology that the central government can then strong arm with moral righteousness both at home and around the world.

Therefore, the "top down" viewpoint generally interprets historical episodes where American government size and interventionism experienced major growth spurts as huge positives. Since American government has usually always experienced its greatest growth in times of war, "environmental top down" historians tend to rate war presidents such as Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and FDR as America's greatest heroes. They also tend to swoon in unison over authoritarian, patrician, or charismatic presidents such as George Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, or Ronald Reagan who created cults of personality or significantly increased a sense of aura or prestige around the office of the Presidency.

The "environmental" aspect holds that it is a good thing that America today is held together more by ideology rather than by any particular racial, ethnic, or cultural homogeneity. It maintains that the profound demographic move away from an America that was once overwhelmingly White Anglo-Saxon Protestant up until the mid-19th century, and 90% white as recently as the mid-1960's, has been a good thing that has added to the "sophistication" of American society as a world power. Hence, it rejoices in increasing "multiracialism" and "multiculturalism" and other forms of "diversity." It assumes that everyone from everywhere in the world is assimilable into American society. It is unconcerned that the white percentage of the total population is dropping by1-2% each year, and that America is on track to become majority nonwhite within a few decades.

Last, but not least, this viewpoint is usually somewhere between hostile to indifferent to any assertions --regardless of the facts presented-- that Jews may be disproportionately represented in the strategic bases of power, such as high finance and national media, and that American foriegn policy may be controlled by Israel and the Jewish Lobby. Since Jews are supposed to be equal and assimilable, any seperate identity is supposed to be happenstance and largely irrelevant. Suggesting that Jews play by a dual set of rules, where they pretend to assimilate while accumulating disproportionate power, is "anti-Semitism" that must be reflexively suppressed, repressed, purged, and cleansed, out of our beautiful minds.

Therefore, the environmental viewpoint viewpoint celebrates every historical event involving some fault shift to the left as a quasi-divine revelation that has somehow advanced the cause of humanity. It is often the political equivalent of the "born again" experience proclaimed by various evangelical, Fundamentalist Christian groups.

Such events as the phrase "all men are created equal" inserted in the Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, Woodrow Wilson's proclamations about a war to "make the world safe for democracy," FDR's "New Deal" and vision for a "United Nations," and Lyndon Johnson's vision of "The Great Society" are all great defining moments of history where Moses has come down from the mountain with a New Revelation. As we scan American history, we need to identify and celebrate all such milestones in which all religious, racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, or class differences became increasingly more blurred or erased altogether. From the environmental viewpoint, such differences are only obstacles that stand in the way for people of all backgrounds to learn how to work together, live together, and act civilized.

I thank Dr. Paul Craig Roberts for the term "Neo-Jacobin." This connotes a form of revolutionary leftism that may support militaristic imperialism and the bloody obliteration of any real or perceived racial, ethnic, and class differences, but might not go quite so far as Bolshevism in terms of confiscating all private property rights. "Neo-Jacobin" seems especially appropriate for America, since the Jacobins of the French Revolution were inspired by the American Revolution, except in a very perverse way. Similarly, modern liberalism is a complete perversion of the classical liberalism espoused by Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine, and other thinkers of the American Revolutionary period.

Sam Dixon calls the "environmental top down" historical viewpoint the "Whig Theory of History" in his excellent article "Shattering the Icon of Abraham Lincoln" where he noted that:

Part of the reason for the importance of Abraham Lincoln in the iconography of the left is explained by the Whig Theory of History which is shared by most leftists in one form or another. The Whig Theory of History holds that history, in particular the history of the English-speaking peoples, is the history of freedom broadening down from precedent to precedent as progress is made away from tradition, authority, monarchy, and aristocracy toward democracy and egalitarianism. The leftist adherents to the Whig Theory of History see Lincoln as part of a continuum running from Runnymede to Cromwell to the so-called Glorious Revolution to the American Revolution to Lincoln to Wilson to Roosevelt to Kennedy and beyond.

Of course, this Whig Theory of History is preposterous and fallacious and maintained only by a thoroughly dishonest editing of historical events. However, the leftists are correct in viewing Lincoln and the effect of his career on the course of the United States as moving America away from an aristocratic society founded upon traditions, authority and property and towards a mass democratic society founded upon universal suffrage, equality and unlimited government-mandated social experimentation. While it is not remarkable that leftists should admire Abraham Lincoln, it is noteworthy and surprising that the Lincoln Myth has been marketed to moderate and conservative Americans.

Everyone Hop On the Liberal Bandwagon

It is true enough that the general trend of American history in the last two hundred years has been a steady drift towards greater centralized government and increasingly leftist social policy. Modern liberals like to portray these trends as inevitabilities and link them to technological and scientific progress. They even coined the propagandistic term "progressivism" as a pseudonym for a march towards leftism and socialism in the late 19th and early 20th century. The implication is that people who do not support these trends are loners, cranks, and misfits who have alienated themselves from some greater collective wisdom mystically embodied within the greater overall trend. Never mind cyclic theories of history that show a steady trend of increasingly leftism and centralization within the Roman Empire before it became terminally corrupt, collapsed, and shattered, or the possibility that the technological and scientific progress enjoyed within the old Soviet Empire may have been due to other factors besides a dysfunctional economic and political system that inevitably collapsed.

Diagnosing where early Americans stood on the "environmental vs. genetic" ideological scale can be a little bit tricky. In his book The End of Kings: A History of Republics and Republicans, William Everdell claims that the entire right hand side of the British political spectrum was missing in the colonies. Other observers claim there was a significant degree of pluralism already existing in America. For example, there was a prepondernce of homesteading descendents of Puritans in New England, some Catholics in Maryland, some Swedes in Delaware, some Dutch in New York, Quakers and German-speaking descendents of Rhine west bank Lutherans in Pennsylvania, pro-Cavalier Anglicans who ran a plantation society in Virginia, and Scots-Irish along the frontier. On the religious side, a significant number of Deistic heretics like Thomas Jeffersion and Tom Paine. On the class side, America had absorbed a significant number of indentured servants from lower classes, convicts, political prisoners and exiles, and religious dissidents.

While it is true that Americans were generally to the left of the Tories (American patriots of the Revolution often called themselves "Whigs," who had their counterpart with the Whig Party in Britain that embraced early forms of classical liberalism), by today's standards, American Whigs and British Tories would both be considered radical hard right. At a minimum, in regard to white seperatism, they all took it for granted that all whites had a perfect right to associate with their own kind and preserve their own racial, cultural, and ethnic uniqueness relative to other white groups, not to mention other races. Most whites had a vastly longer historical memory compared to American whites today, in fact, back in that era most whites could tell you exactly where their ancestors came from in Europe, and it did matter to them. Furthermore, on the maximalist side (regarding treatment of black slaves, Indian savages, and other aliens) white supremacy was frequently conscious social policy on virtually all levels of society.

The first irreversible expression of "environmental top down" ideology came with Lincoln's conquest of the South and Reconstruction. and his blatant destruction of any serious defense of States' rights. This so traumatized the country that it has never recovered any meaningful semblance of the pro-decentralization anti-Federalist philosophy that reflected the majority sentiment of Americans at the time of hte American Revolution. Sadly, by the Woodrow Wilson presidency, the last dikes providing serious resistance to the radical centralization program of Lincoln were overturned. Ever since, the American establishment has run amock with ever more extremely pro- "environmental top down" policy changes.

To legitimize itself, the Establishment selectively edits American history to show ideological elements that can help contribute towards its present viewpoint. For example, in its leftist zeal to overcome racial and gender differences, it elevates to special hero status a Negro who died during the Boston Massacre (Crispus Attucks) and a woman who participated in a battle (Molly Pitcher), while denigrating many "dead white males" such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson who were primary leaders as 'racist slave holders." It also selectively extracts ideological elements that I discuss later in this article that fit its worldview.

Nevertheless, let us review major milestones in the growth of government influence and increasingly leftist social policy.

Colonial Period

Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan followers provide a good starting point to understand the ideological history of America. According to William Everdell in The End of Kings, "Cromwellianism" remained alive and well in the colonies much like a slumbering Rip Van Winkle long after it died out in Britain.

In his biography of Oliver Cromwell, Teddy Roosevelt called Oliver Cromwell one of the greatest Englishmen who ever lived. According to The Cousins Wars by Kevin Philips, most immigrants to New England were Puritans who supported Cromwell. At the time of the American Revolution, most New Englanders viewed Cromwell as a big hero and role model who had successfully deposed a tyranical king.

Teddy Roosevelt was an authoritarian progressive (ie. he held a "environmental top down"). While it is true that Oliver Cromwell fought against the absolutism of King Charles I during the English Civil War, the fact that he was a very brave military leader who later installed himself as military dictator of England certainly gave him authoritarian Brownie points in the eyes of an energetic "take charge" authoritarian statist like Roosevelt. In addition, Cromwell's Puritan followers came straight from the solidly middle class strata of eastern English society. They followed a self-sufficient family farm, homesteader social model in developing New World settlements as opposed to a plantation model. They were also socially strict, using Old Testament laws to mete out harsh punishments.

In regard to leftism, the Puritans were vastly more egalitarian than the Royalists/Cavaliers loyal to the King. In fact, many historians view the Leveler faction that had flourished under Cromwell as a direct early ancestor of modern libertarianism.

The Puritans were also heavily driven by religious ideology and messianic visions. A particularly famous example is the "City on the Hill" speech by Puritan Governor John Winthrop for the Massachusetts colony that provides an early example American exceptionalism. The Puritan ideology was very leftist, to the extent that Christian universalism preaches the equality of human souls and an evangelical mission to "save" everyone in the world, regardless of race, tribe, ethnicity, or nationality.

Hence, early in American history we see a peculiar mixture of authoritarian social direction (the "authority" coming from ancient Jewish laws of the Old Testament), egalitarianism, and leftist messianic social vision, all of which can be very appealing to the modern liberal mindset.

Of course not all American colonies followed the Puritan example. A prime example was Britain's largest colony, Virginia, which evolved a more aristocratic, plantation class structure heavily dependent on raising tobacco.

According to Conceived in Liberty by Dr. Murray Rothbard, the first colony at Jamestown founded in 1607 was initially run under tightly controlled conditions much like Soviet collective farm. It suffered very badly as a result until reformers finally gave colonists more rights in regard to owing their own their own property and growing and marketing their own produce. An important componant of the work force in the mid-17th century in Virginia were white indentured servants, who not infrequently were convicts, political prisoners, or hapless souls kidnapped from the mother country. A typical indentured servant contract might extend seven years. They worked under conditions were not always pleasant. In fact, there were numerous indentured servant revolts that were met with harsh punishment. (See They Were White, and They Were Slaves by Michael Hoffman). It was only later in the middle of the 18th century, the white indentured servants were largely replaced by a large population of negro slaves.

Ironically, although Virginia was originally a bastion of Royalists who supported King Charles I during the English Civil, the republican period under Cromwell helped create a strong political sentiment that the Virginia legislature, or House of Burgesses, should be supreme over any governor of Virginia appointed by a British King. This started a pattern in the mid-17th century where the Houses of Burgesses repeatedly rebelled not only against the appointed governors, but also against the King and Parliament. In fact, Viriginia's legislators showed a continuing pattern of rebelliousness that was an important contributing factor to the American Revolution.

As a major example, nine months before the battle of Lexington and Concord, the Virginia legislature defied the King's prohibition against crossing the Appalachian continental divide and sent a thousand man militia to do battle with Indians along the banks of the Ohio River, subsequently known as the Battle of Point Pleasant (or alternatively the Battle of the Great Kanawha). This supreme act of defiance had such tremedous social and political ramifications that it has been regarded by many historians as a first battle of the American Revolution even though no British soldiers were involved.

A Marxist historian can find some ideologically agreeable themes in the Virginia story involving succesful long term class struggle and revolt. Indentured servants may be viewd as an oppressed class that later becomes part of a prosperous white middle class. Virginia's leaders comprised a generally hard-working, self-educated class that successfully revolted against the British crown. Blacks eventually become emanipated during the Civil War. (Actually it is more historically accurate to call the Civil War the War of Northern Aggression Against Southern Independence, but I will cover this in a different section).

The American Revolution

Many liberals tend to think in ideological terms completely decoupled from acknowldeging biological and racial realities. To them, the American Revolution was first and foremost a revolution, and not just simply a war for independence. Furthermore, it was a "born again" ideological experience, much like a fundamentalist Christian "born again" experience, or like Athena hopping out of the head of Zeus, as opposed to a mere continuation and culmination of over 140 years of colonial history.

When a thirty three year old lawyer wrote that "all men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence, this must be a New Divine Revelation that permanently changes the social order of man. Never mind that elsewhere in the document, Thomas Jefferson disparaged Indians as savages. Never mind as well that later in life, Jefferson never freed his Negro slaves and stated that he was talking about the rights of Englishmen, and not all men. He even stated that Anglo-Saxons were better suited for democracy than many white ethnic groups from Southern Europe and even created an Anglo-Saxon grammer book to show his enthusiasm for their ancient culture.

American leaders moved to the ideological left to not only unite the different colonies and classes of Americans in their struggle against Britain, but also in an effort to enlist the extremely important financial and military aid of France. This was quite a political trick, given that they were mostly Protestants seeking to unite with a Catholic country that had a history of absolutism alien to Anglo-Saxon traditions. In addition, France had been a "hereditary enemy" of Britian for centuries. Less than two decades previously they had been their bitter enemy during the French and Indian Wars. Interestingly enough, Benedict Arnold stated that a reason why he changed sides is that it was too much for him to embrace a Catholic monarch who spoke a foreign language to fight against a Protestant, English-speaking King.

There was also a heavy dose of the environmental viewpoint coming from the emphasis upon the use of reason emphasized by leaders of the Enlightenment. We see in the works of hard core classical liberals such as Tom Paine and Thomas Jefferson a strong belief that through the use of reason, society can not only progress in the arts and sciences, but can also successfully re-engineer its own social, economic, and political structure. Interestingly enough, both Jefferson and Paine were in France either just prior to or during the French Revolution; for a brief period the Goddess of Reason became the official deity of the new French Republic.

The reform phase of the French revolution degenerated into the ghastly Jacobin terror, which in turn paved the way for Napoleon Bonaparte and what many historians regard as the original Orwellian neo-Jacobin modern fascist state. Napoleon's followers preached such leftist slogans as "liberty, fraternity, and equality" while their supreme leader tightly controlled all the newspapers in France and posted a secret police spy on every city block of Paris. He also assembled one of the largest and most formidable imperial military machines in history up until that date. The Jacobin phase of the French Revolution later provided major inspiration for extremely bloody Marxist revolutions, to include the Bolshevist takeover of Russia. In other words, leftists discovered a political forumla where it is possible to tell people that they are free and empowered with equal rights, and simultaneously rule them more cruelly than an absolute monarch.

To this day, modern liberals tend to still apologize for the French Revolution, perhaps because it became such an ideologically delicious blow-out orgy of both leftism and authoritarianism.

Later in life, both Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine denounced both Napoleon and the excesses of the Jacobins, however, they have also been criticized by historians for having been slow to modify their revolutionary ardor for socially reengineering France until after things spun out of control.

The Constitutional Convention and Washington Presidency

The Constitutional Convention of 1787 is another ideological magic moment for many modern liberals.

For starters, the Constitution created a much more centralized Federal government than the Articles of Confederation. Secondly, it promoted the cult of "Constitutionalism," that is, the notion that an ideologically-driven social contract devised by lawyers and politicians can somehow substitute for the superior social glue of the folk traditions of racially and ethnically homogeneous white society. (A number of homgeneous white societies in history have preserved republican forms of government for long periods without relying on written Constitutions, such as Iceland, Switzerland, and various late medieval and Renaissance Italian city states). Third, the Constitution is loaded with verbiage such as "We the People" and various elastic clauses (such as the Commerce Clause) that would eventually be perverted to support Leviathan government and destroy the limited federal republic intended by its founders. Lastly, the mythic importance given to the creation of the Constitution helps throw down the memory hole the fact that all the states already had their own Constitutions and had already successfully governmened themselves for well over a century of colonial history.

Another sacred ideological object of modern liberal (environmental top down) historians are the Federalist Papers, which were actually published some time after the ratifying conventions. Never mind that one someone tries to read them analytically (for example, understanding the tradeoffs discussed in my centralization vs. decentralization discussion), they sound like a bunch of lawyers (Hamilton and Madison) simply shotgunning lots of arguments that rationalize centralization. Most Americans have never even heard of the opposing anti-Federalist papers, nor are they aware that the anti-Federalist viewpoint reflected the majority sentiment at of most Americans in that era. But then again, most Americans have not really read the Federalists Papers or even the Constitution either.

The establishment history tends to treat the replacement of the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution as an "inevitability." The Articles presumably created a less efficient system. However, the problem with arguing for increasing centralized efficiency as an end in itself is that this end could easily wind up becoming a form of tyranny.

Establishment histories also talk about the "genius" of the Constitution in creating "checks and balances" within the branches of government. They typically ingore other checks, such as folk traditions of coherent ethnic groups, or states' rights. They ignore the fact that while branches may tend to keep each other in check, they all have an incentive to grow together.

The original concept of a "federal government" meant that the central government be kept weaker than the state governments. Thomas Jefferson explained the reason for this in his Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, namely that when power is not retained at the local level, it tends to gravitate every more towards the center. Jefferson felt that the ability of states to protect their turf against federal encroachment was ultimately a key bulwark in defending individual rights against Federal tyranny.

Under the compact theory, each American was considered first and foremost a citizen of his state of domicile. It was his state which was in turn a member of the United States. Technically, an American was not a citizen of the United States in the same sense that Americans today typically do not talk abut themselves being a citizen of the United Nations. .

America would be more of a compact of states than a consolidated republic based in Washington, D.C. In the Constitution, the states give up some sovereignty rights on some issues, and retain them on others. Where states give up sovereignty rights, such as in the Commerce clause, the pendulum swings toward consolidated government centered in Washington D.C. Where the states retain sovereignty rights, such as in the Tenth Amendment, we retain what is known as the "compact theory," namely that the United States should be simply be a voluntary association of independent states.

The Constitution was deliberately created as a hybridized document in this regard. For example, Congressmen were elected by popular vote, reflecting a consolidated, national establishment in Washington. In contrast, U.S. Senators were originally provided by the legislatures of each state, similar to the way ambassadors are typically sent from one nation to another. This reflected the compact approach.

Establishment apologists voice concern that without unity, states coud fight each each other. Arguments go for unity, to maintain efficiency in rapidly expanding the country. Americans had strong economic interests in cooperating with each other for fast growth. For example, Washington himself owned major land west of Appalachians.

Never mind that a major problem with fast growth empires, like fast grwoth companies, is tht that typically sacrifice the quality for quantity. After the growth objectives are achieved, people within the organization discover they do not have much in common and do no work very well together.

The Washington Presidency

The George Washington presidency marked a shift towards authoritarianism that may surprise many Americans. After all, as the Washington legend goes, he had ostensibly fought for the cause of liberty rather than to drive up the land values of his extensive land holdings west of the Appalachian continental divide. He subsequently refused an offer by disgruntled army officers of a crown. He stepped down after two terms. He gave a farewell speech saying to beware of foreign entanglements, which sounds like the anti-imperialist Old Right libertarian position. He also said "Government is like fire, a dangerous servant and a terrible master." Again, this sounds libertarian.

In contrast, the real George Washington was also a strict disciplinarian who tried to impose European style order and tactics on his own army. His personal prestige was key in converting a convention formed to suggest amendments to the articles of Confederation into a secretive convention to create a completely new document. Prior to this presidency, there had been ten Presidents of the United States in Congress Assembled serving about one to two year terms apiece under the Articles of Confederation. He replaced them with a an eight year reign. He helped create a central bank, which had to be undone by subsequent anti-Federalists and populist leaders. He supported Alexander Hamilton as his Treasurer, who tried to install the equivalent of the British mercantilist system in America. He raised an army larger than what he commanded at Yorktown to crush a whiskey rebellion in western Pennsylvania. He favored a Federal government strong enough to maintain a strong Federal army embarked upon continuous campaigns of conquest against Western lands occupied by Indians. Individual states such as Virginia were no longer responsible for supporting their own westward expansion. Many historians believe that his statement about avoiding foreign entanglements had more to do with his policy of reneging on America's treaty commitment to support France than upon an anti-imperialist philosophy. A Federalist fellow-traveler who succeeded him, John Adams, promoted the Alien and Sedition Acts where were a direct attack on First Amendment rights of free speech.

George Washington's aristocratic style gave a sense of grandeur, prestige, and high moral tone to a federal government that claimed to respect state's rights and state sovereignty, but in fact the Constitution (and to a much lessor extent the Articles of Confederation) had already robbed the states of most of their soverignty by taking away their right to issue their own money, independently conduct diplomacy and make alliances, independently make war, and control trade and the flow of people across their borders.

The Jefferson Administration

America's long term march towards greater centralization and leftism has not been a steady one. There have been many thrusts and counterthrusts by opposing anagonists.

Thomas Jefferson certainly helped roll back many of the centralization ploys of the Federalists. He helped get rid of the first Central Bank and the oppressive Alien and Sedition Act, both of which had been serious threats. This was a "counter thrust" to the Federalist "thrust" towards centralization.

Ironically, despite Jefferson's political philosophy favoring decentralization, he ended up giving centralization a major shot in the arm hrough his Louisiana Purchase. For starters, he went outside the Constitution to opportunitistically make the purchase, although later it was blessed by Congress. Next, he handed over responsibility to the Federal Government for fast development of the new territories, which greatly grew the Federal government's power relative to the states.

This demonstrated how "geo-strategic" considerations were a greater driver towards centralization than ideology.

Stated simply, Americans were competing not only with Indians, but also against empires. In the North Americans competed with the British Empire (in control of Canada) for where to place the latitude lines between Wisconsin and present day Oregon and Washington. In the South, Americans competed first with the Spanish Empire and later Mexico. Other empires that may want to butt in at some point (Russia with Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, France with its reinsertion into the Louisiana territory following Napoleon's conquest of Spain, and later reinsertion into Mexico under Napoleon III).

An aggressive policy to control and occupy these new territories suggested a de facto leftist and imperial policy. Leftist in the sense that the fastest way populate the new territories was to invite peoples of many different ethnicities and nationalities to immigrate from Europe. Imperial, in the sense that it required an ever larger central government with more revenues to maintain a large enough Army and Navy to conquor and garrison a large land mass.

Even though the "Founding Fathers" voiced concern about the dangers of creating a large standing army, that is exactly what American establishments created between the War of 1812 and the Mexican War. West Point was after America's botched efforts by militia to invade Canada during the War of 1812. It was created to form a hardened officer corps that could do a better job of leading military expeditions to foreign places than local militias. America wants to have its cake and eat it to. It wants the protection of individual rights characteristic of a limited republic, and at the same time wants to rapidly grow from the Atlantic to the Pacific with the speed of a burgeoning empire, while maintaining a standing Federal army and Navy that can successfully hold its own against he imperial armies of other countries. The Mexican War proved that America did in fact now possess a permanent Federal military establishment -a de facto imperial army- that was very capable of fighting foreign wars far from home.

Everyone Hop On Board the Manifest Destiny Bandwagon

One might recollect the old slogan "California is more than a state; it is a state of mind." (Or at least it was a bastion for free spirits before it became majority Mexican, overly congested in various areas, and largely bankrupt). One might say the same thing about America at the beginning of the 19th century.

An interesting dramatization of this concept comes from the mid-19th century novel "The Man Without A Country." The upshot of the novel is that while the protagonist is exiled on ship from America for damning the U.S. Government, he still emotionally identifies with America for the remainder of his life by tracking the progression of new states being created from east to West throughout the mid-19th century. He identifies with the growth of a vibrant New Society where the common man can not only find ample economic opportunity, but also ignore the class barriers, ethnic differences, and other constraints of Old Europe.

I think there was certain "environmental top town" psychology that preoccupied Americans in the early 19th century even on the grass roots level.
For starters, the key to wealth was to acquire new land in a New World or New Frontier. Typically they were surrounded by immigrants from many different nationalities or places in Europe. Part of adapting for immigrants to "reinvent" themselves ideologically to adapt to new neighbors of very different backgrounds.
There was a "top down" aspect in that Americans took pride in seeing their land base expand from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The mentality was "bigger is better." It was a saga of growth and adventure.
Beyond any issues involving tarrifs or slavery, one can imagine how many Americans sought to suppress the secession of the South because it was like taking the punch bowl away from the Manifest Destiny party too soon. Many Westerners did not like the idea of a newly emergenet foreign country controlling the base of the Mississippi.

John Marshall and the Imperial Judiciary

According to Dr. Gutzman's admirable work The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution, Supreme Court John Marshall created the first truly imperial judiciary.

One important legal theory that he espoused that greatly promoted the consolidation and centralization trendof America, and which was later echoed by Abraham Lincoln, was the concept that the United States Government was created by all the people together (regardless of their states). This government in turn creatred the states. Therefore, individual citizens must look to the Federal Government to be their protector rather than their states and dismiss the compact theory.

Dr. Thomas Woods observes that through much of American colonial history, the colonies acted like independent countries. In three seperate occassions they resisted formed a consolidated union in North America, but instead looked to the King and Parliament, who typically remained across the Atlantic out of sight and out of mind. Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo has observed that is ridiculous to thing that the Federal creatred the states, since many states pre-existed the Government

However, one can begin understand the Marshall and Lincoln argument based on the very active role of the Federal government in conquoring and developing lands west of the Appalachians beginning with the Washington presidency. For example, the Midwestern states were originally purchased by the Federal Government in the Louisiana Purchase, and later largely cleared by Federal soldiers.

Some other Marshall innovations. He asserted the right of Supreme Court to overrule both Contgress and State Legislatures -a definite force for centralization.

We need to keep in mind where all of this is headed. Today, according to Dr. Gutzman, we have a Supreme Court that thinks it can rule all aspects of private citizens lives, and rarely bothers to consult the intent and meaning of the original Constitution, but instead relies on trendy "sociological theories" and the particular ways that case law pile on top of each other.

Central Banks and the Consolidation of Money and Credit

The anti-Federalists, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson were all strong opponents of the creation of a central bank. For the first 137 years of the existence of the U.S., the creation of such banks was relatively short-lived, and the rationale was much more specific than it is today. In contrast, in the last century, America has been under the Federal Reserve Banking system continuously since 1913. America has shown the same steady trend towards increasing consolidation and centralization as in other social, political, and economic areas.

For much of the colonial period, Americans enjoyed what is known as a free market money system. This means that the private citizen was free to use whatever he wanted for money in a volunary exchange system. Along the frontier, people often used wampum and other forms of barter. In late 18th century the majority of coins in circulation were foreign coins, such as Spanish pieces of eight and French and Dutch coins. These coins typically had intrinsic value, that is, they had a certain content of gold or silver. The dollar itself, in the coinage Act of 1792, was defined as 371 and 1/4 grains of silver. The Constitution clearly stated that only Congress could issue money and regulate the gold and silver content of coins.

It is important we tunderstand on a broad conceptual level what we have here. A free money market system means that money is kept out of the hands of government officials and central bankers. They cannot manipulate it. It also means that banks are treated like any other business and are allowed to fail on a local level. They usually also tend to act like credit unions and loan out only what they take in with deposits. Last, but not least, throughtout history, free money market systems to center themselves on the use of gold and silver coins, becuase these precious metals have historically had the best characteristics that the public wants in terms of money, ie, infinitely divible, indestructable, high value to unit weight, and limited in supply. In a completely free money system, the value of gold and silver float relative to each other according to free market supply and demand. Furthermore, the burdon is largely on members of the public to protect itself against counterfeiting and bank failure.

According to Dr. Murray Rothbard in his History of Money and Banking in America, the free money market system actually worked pretty well in early America, all considered. Local bank failures were usually never more than 1-2% a year, and most Americans could manage around them by diversifyin the banks they used as well as storing money on their own. Keeping some money inside your mattress was actually not a bad idea, since dollars were redeemable in gold and silver, and tended to appreciate over the long haul as the underlying American economy steadily grew. Under the old gold standard, the dollar could buy about 50% more in 1913 compared to 1813, despite Civil War inflation that doubled the supply of paper dollars.

The most obvious question, then, is why did Americans abandon a free market money system at various times in the 19th century, and totally abandon it for good in the 20th century?

The simplest answer is that the U.S. government tended to abandon free market money in times of war. The reason is that it is usualy much harder for a government to finance a war if sticks to free market money principles. For starters, such principles force a government to be honest, and this can become quite painful in time of war. Among other things, the government is forced to openly borrow the money it needs or explicitly raise it through taxes and requisitions, or some combination of the two.

There is "quick and dirty" alternative that is much less painful to the government, but it comes at the price of abandonining free market money and cheating the public on the long term value of the money it holds. This alternative is called resorting to "fiat" (or "command") money, which is usually issued as paper money. In this way government can simply print up the money it needs to finance war without going to the trouble of collecting it through taxes or borrowing it throught bond issues.

The American Revolution is a prime example. The government issued the Continental, a paper note that was not backed by anything. It eventually inflated into worthlessness, and left a lot of people empty-handed, but in the mean time the notes were able to buy a lot food, guns, and cannon for the soliders.

One reason why the Continental Congress played the paper money game is that since the rebellion was in large part over taxes, it was politically inexpedient to raise taxes to finance the war. However, ironically, the loss in purchasing power of money when government is printing it to finance its expenditures is a hidden form of taxation. People holding the currency suffer a loss in purchasing power just as if they had lost money that maintained its value to tax collectors.

The U.S. Government again created massive amounts of paper money to finance both the War of 1812 and the Civil War. In both instances, the government created a central bank to issue the paper money.

Despite all of this, it is important to note the general social and political attitude about money and banking of that era. There was a general feeling that unless there was a war, government should generally keep its hands off money. Hostility towards a central bank was an important tenant of Jacksonian Democracy and 19th populist movements. After all, a free market money system is the ultimate in political and economic decentralization. It keeps money distributed in the hands of the people, and out of the hands of government bureaucrats and central bank operators.

It must also be noted that economic theory tended to focus on what is called classical economics, today called laissez faire or libertarian economics. The idea is taht real economic growth starts on the grass roots level with successful entrepreneurial calculation by private individuals. The focus is upon creating things of increasing usefulness and with an ever improving ration of price to quality.

Dr. Edwin Veira has written Pieces of Eight, which is history of money in America from a legal viewpoint. What is interesting about his work is that one can see a trend where over time the government keeps sticking its fingers into money and credit matters, gradually ratcheting more and more control in both peacetime and war, and conversely leaving less freedom for private individuals.

There are at least two major causes of increasing centralization during this era.

The first, that Prof Robert Higgs identifies in his work, is the general ratchet up effect of war. Once politicians are able to centralize banking and finance in time of war, they rarely revert back the way things were before. In other words, they learned how far they can bully and mislead the public, and do not want to surrender their newly special privileges.

The second involves a general ideological attack on lassiz faire that accelerated towards the end of the 19th century with the advent of progressivism and other forms of socialism.

Basically the socialists started to persuade the public that private businessmen and free markets could not longer be trusted. Businessmen are too greedy and short-sighted, they claimed. Free markets really do not work without massive government regulation, they claimed, because private businessmen tend to become nasty monopolists. Therefore, under socialism, they will cure these problems by placing more private property and economic decision-making intot he hands of government.

In other words, politicians, government bureaucrats, and central bankers enjoying concentrated powers through some supermagical process can be trusted to be significantly more moral and wise than private businessmen. That is what they in effect said, but that is not how the "progressives" sold socialism. They sold socialism by showing pictures of pathetic, exploited people and suggesting that they have an economic system that would be even better in solving these problems. They were very good at doing an extremely persistant sales job until they wore people down and got their programs so firmly entrenched among government and unions that it became very difficult to back-track.

Taxation

In the early 19th century, most Americans did not have any contact with the government unless they went to the Post Office. Government was kept at about 5% of GDP compared to 50% today, and it raised most of its revenues from tarrifs and land sales. There was no income tax for either individuals or corporations.

Most charities were private. Americans commonly served in volunteer militia, fire departments, and other community service organizations.

The Tarriff of Abominations Crisis

An important push towards centralization took place under Andrew Jackson with the Tarriff of Abominations policy. In that era, tarrifs of around 10-15% were considered normal, whereas tarriffs of 50% were considered "hostile."

One of the big problems with a high tarriff, protectionist policy was the conflict of interest between the North and South. The North had a substantial industrial base, and its industrial leaders benefited from protectionism. The South was heavilty agrarian, and relied on income from exporting cotton to foreign markets. Unfortunately, the way it tends to work out in international relations and economics, is that high tarriffs on imports tend to become reflected in equally high tarrifs on exports. In other words, if a Southern Plantation sold his cotton in England, the easiest thing for him to do was to swap the value of his export into English manufactured goods and bring them back to the South. The only problem is that the he got his with a 50% tarriff, which became roughly equivalent to getting taxed 50% on the value of his exported cotton.

Not surprisingly, South Carolina threatened to succeed int he mid-1820's. The crisis was resolved when tarriffs were brought back down to the mid-teens.

Interestingly enough, three states had ratified the Constittuion ont he provision that they can seceded any time they wish (Virginia, Maryland and ____). Thomas Jefferson and James Madison advocated secessionism as a last ditch remedy in their Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798. During the War of 1812 the New England states had contemplated secession at the Hartford Convention. Other states had secession clauses when they joined the union, such as the Lone Star Republic of Texas.

When Andrew Jackson threatened to invade South Carolina during the Tarriff of Abomination crisis, that was a very serious challenge to the doctrine fo the right of secession to protect states rights, particularly since it came from a fellow Southerner, and certainly set a precedent that Lincoln would later exploit to permantent consolidate the Union.

It also set a tragic precedent where South Carolinians felt that they had successfully faced down the Federal government by becoming militant. This egged them on to try it again 1861 where they reaped very different results.

Also, when the government threatens to raise tarrifs to 50%, it is being quite a bit more aggressive than simply acting as the middleman in a compact of states. It is trying to steer domestic industrical policy, and is punishing some regions at the expense of others. Furthermore, the need for much higher tarriffs may reflect a need to finance an imperial army, which the Federal army had become by the time of the Mexican War when it had to man garrisons from sea to shining sea, and support the beginnings of a global navy. .

Mexican War

Americans were conditioned to think in expansionism from sea to shining sea as an end in itself. When the South threatened secession, much harder to contemplate giving up territory

 

Foreign Policy:

America not only witnessed the growth of an imperial professional standing army, but something similar for its Navy as its maritime interests increased with its size from sea to sea.

Commodore Perry "opened up" Japan in 1854. Based on idea of a need to conquor new markets to access them. This is actually similar to Lenin's negative view of capitalism, as having to force itself on foreigners to find new markets.

The "Civil" War

The War of Northern Aggression Against White Southern Independence was the great water shed in American history. It was a war of aggression because Lincoln maneuvered South Carolina into firing the first shots, and raised an invasion army without Constitutional authority. It was actually a war of independence and not a civil war because the South's political objective was simply to break apart and not take control of the federal government and northern states.

Between the signing of the Constitution, and the commencement of Mr. Lincoln's War, the American political system was a hybridized system. It was both a quasi imperial system and a quasi limited republic. By crushing states rights, running roughshod over habea corpus and other basic restraints, and elevating Negro rights over white rights during the Reconstruction, the U.S. Government destroyed forever any real substance behind the limited republic designed by the Founding Fathers.

The U.S.Government became instead a de facto Orwellain oligarchical neo-Jacobin imperial superstate that increasingly practiced varous forms of both limited and artificial democracy only for cosmetic purposes. From one viewpoint, the war was not much more than a terrible tragedy. Nothing good came out of it. Like the fratricidal Peloponnessian War between ancient Athens and Sparta, it did little more than leave the combatants horribly attrited and the quality of their societies heavily brutalized, vulgarized, demoralized, and degraded.

However, from the "environmental top down" historical viewpoint, you are not supposed to think this way. Part of the environmental top down viewpoint involves aquiring an Orwellian aptitude for double speak and twist-speak. It really had to be the Civil War.because the compact theory is wrong-headed.

It was also, as the neo-Marxist historian _ a "second American Revolution." Abraham Lincoln became another American Moses, coming down from the mountain, with more wondrous Revelations to get Americans to ideologically reinvent themselves, once again

Normally, the term "nation" comes from the Latin "nacio" which means birth, and implies a political unit of people more or less voluntarily unitedby common ancestry, heritage, ethnicity, language and culture. In contrast, an "empire" implies disparate groups held together by conquest and coercion. In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln said "this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom." Yet what he really forged was a new empire based on bloody conquest of the South, characterized by ever growing federal government at the expense of individual freedom, as Prof Jeffrey Humelt points out in his book Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men." Furthemore, as H.L. Mencken observed in his note on the Gettysburg Address, the Southern Cause of Inddwas actually much closer to the Patriot cause in the War of Indendence than American Revolution.

From the modern liberal viewpoint, American democracy became wonderfully refresthed by enfranchising Negroes to increase its "diversity" and "humanity." Never mind that Negro troops ran around the South in blue uniforms during the Reconstruction era raping white women, or that former Negro slaves who got themselves elected in reconstruciton legislatrran some of the most illiterate, incompetent, and corrupt governing bodies in American history. The advent of greater "democracy" is too wonderful to get bogged down in such triffling details about some rough-housing or Machiavellian horse-play.

In addition to crushing states rights, the war brought back a central bank. It also saw the first income tax.

Having proven how far Lincoln could push Americans with "republican fascism in time of war, the remaining task for his predatory successors was to figure out ingenous ways to hornswoggle Americans with similar things in time of peace. This is in fact what Americans got under Woodrow Wilson in 1913 witrh the advent of the income tax and Federal Reserve.

But then again, from a modern liberal perspective, no doubt the aforementioned all sounds too negative. Don't you see, all of this involves spreading the sacred flame of 'democracy" to liberate all men, everywhere on the planet? As JFK put it, "We must bear any burdon..." to advance these new ideological abstractions called "freedom," "democracy," and "liberty." Who are we, as mere mortal Aemricans, to shirk from paying a hefty income tax or suffering a central bank when so glorious a task lies before us? We must all remain permanently mobilized in a great, never endind cause. How guilty we must feel to know that so many others have already stoically paid an even greater price than we for this great cause. Who are we to question them?.

I think, for example of the mother who received the famous consoling letter from Abraham Lincoln that stated:

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and frivolous must be any words of mine which could attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice on the altar of Freedom.

Sam Dixon summarizes in his article "Shattering the Icon of Abraham Lincoln:":

The proper place of Abraham Lincoln in American history is as part of the liberal trinity of F.D.R., Wilson and Lincoln. He had the same values they had. He advanced the country toward unlimited government as they did. He was willing to use foreigners and minority groups against his own people. He was willing to have a selective "democratic" conscience when it came to subjects like deportations. He properly ought to be considered as a major liberal force, as someone who moved the country toward the left and toward the situation which exists today...

 

The Reconstruction Era

The 14th Amendment

Masssive corruption.

The "Progressive" Era

Robber Barons.

William McKinley and the Spanish American War

This is good, because this is training wheels for America's future role as the global supercop, to enforce "democracy" around the planet. The Filipino occupation bureacracy that later served in the World War I bureaucracy, which later served in the New Deal.

In addition, it showed that a substantial number of white Southerners were willing to let Civil War bygones be bygones, and enlist in an imperial overseas Federl enterprise, rather than continue the unreconstructed struggle of the Ku Klux Klan, John Wilkes Booth, and Jesse James on the home front. This reassured the Establishment that when they would throw the next war (WWI), plenty of Southern cannon fodder would show up for it.

Never mind that explosion in the Battleship Maine was probably internal, U.S. army and Marines killed over 400,000 filipinos, used torture, and that ___ ironically observed taht on an ideological level "Spain has really conquored America," and that white Americans had very little in common with their newly conquored provinces, which they ended up mostly surrendering during the decolonialization process following WWII.

 

Teddy Roosevelt

The cult of personality.

Great white Fleet. Running roughshod over Congress.

Admired Bismarck's social welfare system.

Extolled military as a great way to homogenize people from all walks of life.

From the liberal perspective, the melting pot is a very good thing. New immigrants are acquiring an American identity. In contrast, regionalism is an antiquated, retarded, reactionary thing. Similarity, greater Union means more power. America on steroids.

Woodrow Wilson

Federal Reserve

Income Tax

Women's Suffrage

League of Nations. The theory is that by creating greater alliances, reduce the prospects of war. Never mind that while it may deter some wars in the short run, in the long run, when wars take place, they may end up killing more people because they drag in even more combattants.

Herbert Hoover

Franklin D. Roosevelt

New Deal Price Controls
Creation of the United Nations

Harry Truman

Integration of the Armed Forces; never mind that Stalin had employed an opposite policy

Undeclared war under Communist command.

 

 

Role of Government in managing the economy

 

 

 

, and it has to be the period where America was born

 

 

 

The Prehistoric Period

There is now mounting evidence that Caucasians peopled the Americas for approximately five to ten thousand years before waves of Mongoloids came in around 10,000 BC and wiped them out or assimiliated them out of existence.

I think the modern liberal attitude towards this historical insight was summarized when the Clinton Administration had the Army Corps of Engineers look the other way as American Indian visitors pilfered the remains of Kennewick Man and actively sided with their effort to take custody of the bones to deny access to scientists. In addition, it had the Army Corps of Engineers bulldoze the Kennewick Man site along the banks of the Columbia River.

To the modern liberal mind, the fact that whites may have been here first, and may have provided the brains behind the rise of early Inca, Maya, and Aztec Civilizations, and that furthermore they may have been wiped out by Indians --alll of this is extremely dangerous. It might stir a "blood and soil" ancestral identification by whites with parts of the Americas, which might in turn inspire forms of social and political seperatism.

Since modern liberals believe that humans are all about learning and have no significant genetic differences between racial and ethnic groups, they promote social integration and generally oppose all forms of seperatism. Therefore, it is very important that scientific artifacts like Kennewick Man be kept either completely suppressed, or spin-doctored to show that the bones could not have been Caucasian.

The Colonial Period

The earliest permanent British colony in North America was Jamestown, Virginia founded in 1606. By the 1630's, over 40,000 Puritans had settled in New England. They even founded a college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and shown every sign that they had achieved critical mass and were in America to stay.

Therefore, we can talk about a good 140-170 years of American colonial history preceding the Declaration of Independence in 1776. In contrast, it has been a mere 232 years between the founding of the U.S. Government and the year of my composition of this article, which is 2006. In other words, colonial history comprises about three fourths of the time that the U.S. Government has been in existence. Despite all of this, many modern liberals view the colonial period as essentially a relatively unimportant, extremely immature, if not "pre-human" period gestation in the womb before the real history of America begins with the American Revolution.

After all, by modern liberal standards, the colonists were totally out of step (or just plain "weird") compared to the current modern liberal agenda. For example, only white males with property could vote and participate in government. In both the Northern and Southern colonies whites owned Negro slaves and imported whites from the lower classes as indentured servants. The Puritans of New England wore funny Leprachaun-like buckled hats, carried blunderbusses, were uptight about sex, and did nasty things like kill Indians, water-dunk suspected witches, and humiliate criminals by puttin them in stocks in public squares.

In most areas Whites retained fairly strong Old World political and cultural ties (in other words, to many modern liberals they were just so disgustingly anti-melting pot and anti-pluralism); for example, until 1650's the Dutch of New Amsterdam spoke Dutch and belonged to the Netherlands, and up until the 1650's parts of Delaware belonged to Sweden. Even at the time of the American Revolution, signficant portions of Pennsylvania, settled by Rhine West bank German Lutherans) still spoke Germans. Some Scots-Irish of the American still wore tartains and carried Claymore swords, such as at the Battle of Moore's Creek and were very conscious of their Clan ancestry and history of embattlement with Britain. . Most Puritans of New England still had a strong ideological, religious, and ancestral identification with the Parliamentary/Cromwellian side of the English Civil War.

As another modern liberal horror, the colonists resisted on three seperate ocassions an effort to unite the colonies under one government in North America. Theoretically they were united under the British crown, except up until the French and Indian Wars (1654-1663), the colonies tended to be "out of sight, out of mind" and operated under a policy of "benign neglect" from the mother country.

In this environment of benigh neglect, each colony frequently acted like its own completely independent, fully sovereign country. Most colonies had periods where they issued their own money or tolerated a completely free market money system where people could transact with whatever they wanted, to include French and Spanish coins, wampum, and pieces of gold and silver. Many colonies experienced extending periods where they restricted immigration from other colonies, staunchly defended their own religious and ethnic-demographic homogeneity, and seperataely financed and launched their own military expeditions.

Many parts of America had almost no government by European standards, for example, even as late as the 1830's De Tocqueville noted that France had thirty times as many government bureaucrats per capita as America. Most "government" in colonial America was conducted on a very localized, grass roots level.

In other words, as colonial pioneers were were forced to reinvent civilization out of the raw wilderness, they discovered through practical experience that they could get by with relatively little government and class distinctions by European standards. In fact, not only were they not missing anyting, but they were actually much more happy and prosperous. Or at least, not until later eras of American history when successive waves of slick lawyers, pork politicians, media monopolists, corporate rent-seekers, and other parasites would slowly but surely brainwash their descendents out of their heritage of liberty.

To the modern liberal mentality, much of this colonial experience is embarrassingly "reactionary" stuff best kept flushed down the memory hole, since it is actually further to the ideological right than the Confederate position on State's Rights.

A few diamonds in the rough of the colonial experience

With some very careful, selective editing, there are in fact some elements of the colonial era that can excite modern liberals.

For example, there was a very strong streak of utopianism, ideological fanaticism, and generalized Messianic Evangelical craziness to the Puritan settlers of New England that would later morph into the wild-eyed Yankee abolitionists who sang "Glory Hallelujah" while using the using the terrible swift sword of Big Federal Government to remold America during the War Against Southern Independence. Later, this old wine would be continually poured into new bottles, such as the global Holy War For Democracy against European monarchists in WWI, the Holy War against "Fascism" in WWII (somehow not inconsistent with America's strong alliance with British Imperialists and Soviet Totalitarians), or the succeeding global Holy Cold War against "Global Communism," or the current neo-conservative Global Holy War on Terror against so-called "Islamofacism."

Since environmentalists believe that humans are simply products of learning and ideology, a people like the Puritans who were out to ideologically remold and save the world can only be heroes, especially once their descendents learned to swap their fundamentalist Christian evangelical ideology for modern liberalism. Since Americans are on a special mission from God in the New World, and are exempt from all constraints of "Old Europe," there is no limit to what we can do.

To intelligently discuss the Puritan phenomenon, we need to at least address the Puritan hero Oliver Cromwell and the Puritan-Parliamentary side of the English Civil War. Oliver Cromwell was a very ideologically-driven individual, who sought to scrupulously embracing alien religious theology invented by ancient Jews and by implication further purge his fellow Englishmen, (not to mention the Scots and Irish who felt the point of his sword), of their indigenous Nordic and Celtic pagan culture. He even accepted financing from Jews and readmitted them en masse back into England. Not surprisingly, his Puritan admirers and their descendents in America would subsequently build a country held together mainly by utopian leftist ideology rather than indigenous white racial and ethnic loyalties and traditions. In the late 1800's, the descendents of the Puritans in America would also support the largest mass immigration and social, political, and economic empowerment of Jews in world history. So much so, in fact, that Jewish-dominated America of the 20th century would be called "The Jewish Century" in a book by a Jewish author.

When push came to shove, Cromwell perverted his republican cause by making himself military dictator of England. Here we see a theme of authoritarian, top down, statism that would also continually fester and gain the upper hand in American history. As an example, it is no accident that Theodore Roosevelt, who pioneered the U.S. Presidency as an authoritarian cult of personality, and whose "progressivism" aped the statist fascism of Germany's Bismarck, would claim in his biography of Oliver Cromwell that this one of the greatest Englishmen who ever lived.

It is also not surprising that modern liberals get mushy over the "City on a Hill" sermon delivered by John Winthrop around 1630. It is a phrase that has been endlessly repeated in speeches by American politicians, to include President-elect John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan in his inaugeral. John Winthrop claimed that the settlers had a special covenant with God to provide an example to the world.

This sentiment was a forerunner of American Exceptionalism, the concept that Americans can create a brave new world and freely discard all the basic tenants of Right Wing 101 and still maintain a viable and sustainable society.

The American Revolution

To the modern liberal mind, the American Revolution was first and foremost all about a Divine Relevation embedded in the Declaration of Independence, namely: "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal."

This is Holy Gospel taht must be taken literally. Forget about the fact that later in the document Jefferson disparaged Indian savages, or wrote that blacks are not equal to whites, and that he was really writing about the equal rights of Englishmen and not every featherless biped on the planet (in fact, Jefferson wrote that we owe the English Common law to the Anglo Saxon hundreds (he even wrote an Anglo-Saxon grammer and felt that Americans should learn it), that Northern Europeans were better suited by temperament to republicanism than other Europeans, and that ...forget all of this...to the modern liberal mind, the phrase "all men are created equal" applies to men of all races, ethnicitics, and national and geographic origins.

Also, forget about the fact that major impetus to the American revolution was resistance to Parliamentary tyranny and a desire for political seperatism, and not to fulfill literal interpretations of human equality. Many "Founding Fathers" such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson continued to own Negro slaves for decades following the Revolution.

The literal interpretation of "All men are created equal" clause is a good starting point to describe the "Whig Theory of History." The American Revolution helped put American heavily "at risk" towards this theory. Later, following the Abraham Lincoln dictatorship in support of the War Against Southern Independence, the Whig Theory of History became the Holy Writ of the American Establishment.

Sam Dickson provides an excellent summary of this theory in his article "Shattering the Icon of Abraham Lincoln."

Part of the reason for the importance of Abraham Lincoln in the iconography of the left is explained by the Whig Theory of History which is shared by most leftists in one form or another. The Whig Theory of History holds that history, in particular the history of the English-speaking peoples, is the history of freedom broadening down from precedent to precedent as progress is made away from tradition, authority, monarchy, and aristocracy toward democracy and egalitarianism. The leftist adherents to the Whig Theory of History see Lincoln as part of a continuum running from Runnymede to Cromwell to the so-called Glorious Revolution to the American Revolution to Lincoln to Wilson to Roosevelt to Kennedy and beyond.

Of course, this Whig Theory of History is preposterous and fallacious and maintained only by a thoroughly dishonest editing of historical events. However, the leftists are correct in viewing Lincoln and the effect of his career on the course of the United States as moving America away from an aristocratic society founded upon traditions, authority and property and towards a mass democratic society founded upon universal suffrage, equality and unlimited government-mandated social experimentation. While it is not remarkable that leftists should admire Abraham Lincoln, it is noteworthy and surprising that the Lincoln Myth has been marketed to moderate and conservative Americans.

Incidentally, "Whig" was a pseudonym for "Patriot" used during the American Revolutionary period. For example, in the book The Heroes of King's Mountain written in the late 1800's, the author Drapger frequently refers to the Patriots as "Whigs".

I went to great lengths in my top down vs bottom up and environmental vs. genetric discussion in my "Resovling Ideological Viewpoints" series to help readers sort out the confusion that these political terms can create. For starters, the "Whig" of the American Revolutionary period was very different ideological animal than the "Whig" of Lincoln's era or the modern liberal today. Back in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the term "Whig" was fairly synonous with the term "classical liberal," and somewhere between what we would call "anarcho-libertarian" and "paleo-conservative" today. "Whigs" were generally for limited government, against European style imperialism, and for maximum individual empowerment and personal property rights. Most 18th and 19th century Whigs were also unabashed white racists and nationalists.

Whigs were prevalent among pioneers in America and middle class industrialists and entrepeneurs in England because all they wanted was to get the privileged classes and government off their backs so that they could make their own lives and fortunes.

By the mid-19th century, quite a few Whigs became ideologically very corrupt and hypocritical. They represented entrepreneurs who had now made big fortunes who now sought to use government-mandated special privelige to lock in their new advantages and freeze out their potential competitors, while at the same time hypocritically spouting classical liberal jargon to hide the fact that they were now behaving as ust as selfishly as their old political enemies, suich as slave-holding, plantation-owning aristocratic Tories. The Whigs of Lincoln's era consisted of Northern Industrialists who sought to hike protective tarriffs to obscene levels (around 50%), to effectively use government coercion to goose their corrupt profits, while at the same time punishing the ability of Southerners to export their cotton to foreign markets. (As a rule of thumb, import proectionism tends to punish foreign exports by an equal amount. Please see the Mises Institute lecturs by Dr. Mark Thornton for the full explanations behind this).

By the mid-20th century, the self-styled heirs of the Whig tradition became one quantum level even more corrupt and hypocritical. As the commentator Joseph Sobran has observed, both modern liberals and many so-called modern "conservatives" (or self-styled "neo-cnoservatives) embrace almost the exact opposite policies of both their "classical liberal" and "classical conservatives." Modern liberals embrace unlimited socially activist Federal government and scorn "constitutionalism" and limited government. In fact, many modern liberals embrace the creation of a global supergovernment called the United Nations, despite the fact that to Whigs of theAmerican Revolutionary era, they perceived "government" in itself as being more part of man's problems than his solutions. Modern liberals also embrace global U.S. government to enforce "democracy around the pattern" rather than reject imperialism, and support federal invasion of personal privacy and property rights so long as it serves some utopian, leftist social purpose.

Remember, however, that modern liberals trust learning, or the environmental factors, to overcome all problems.

Is the government getting too large and arrogant? No problem, we simply have to give government bureaucrats more training on how to act more professional. We simply have to institute more internal procedures to curb abuses.

Are there problems between racial and ethnic groups? No problem, we just simply have to teach new techniques for learning how to get along. Increasing "diversity" becomes a strength, because it forces us to become ever more sophisticated about "getting along." In this view, becoming ever more "sophisticated" and "cosmopolitan" is a sign of greater maturity, adulthood, and worldliness. These modern liberal virtures are worthy as ends in themselves.

Therefore, let us view America history from the vantage point where the the government is somehow successfully refining and perfecting itself as repository of collective social wisdom at the same time that its tax and regulatory burdon becomes ever more obnoxious. In addition, let us see how social policy is continually doing a better job of "sophisticating" us.

Interestingly, the social history of America parallels its political changes, therefore I have to discuss both at the same time.

The roots of ever escalating American social sophistication in the 19th century as WASPs learn ever more exotic ways to "share"

At the time of the American Revolution, America already had greater problems involving rootedness and ethnic and racial cohesion than England. America had about 10% of its population as Negro slaves, and various associations with Indian tribes along the frontier. It had foreigners such as Dutch, Germans, Scots, and Irish in addition to Ango-Saxon English. It had been a dumping ground for criminals and underclasses. Still, by today's standards, America was still mostly an overwhelmingly White Anglo-Saxon Protestant country, with primarily a Northern European Nordic-Celtic ancestry. It was still a de facto Nordic-Celtic ethnostate.

Not to worry about retrogressing into any form of homogeneity. By allying themselves with France, a Catholic country, America even more "sophisticated."

Next watershed, immigration of millions of Irish Catholics following the potato famines of the 1840's.

Immigrants who lacked state roots. Lincoln elected by mostly recent immigrants.

The clincher was

The 19th century history of American government allegedly self-perfecting itself as it grows into a continental empire

In our analysis, we need to look at the legal history. Major hallmarks towards centrism:
a) Articles of Confederation vs. the colonial government
b) Constitution over Articles of Confederation
b) Alexander Hamilton, Bank of U.S., Washington's Imperial Presidency
c) Louisiana Purchase
d) War of 1812
c) John Marshall
d) Andrew Jackson's move against nullification
e) Mexican War. The negative is that whites are gaining more living space at expense of Mexicans, and this is bad, because only Mexicans can morally gain living space against evil and immoral white people (as we see with the illegal immigrant invasion). This is bad because from a modern liberal perspective, white people can only morally fight for abstract leftists ideologies, particulary when it benefits alien peoples like South Koreans, South Vietnamese, Iraqis, and anti-Taliban Afghanistanis) and never for anything as concrete as augmenting their own physical wealth or white ethnic genetic interestsh. The "positive" part of the Mexican War is it proved that America had solved the foreign expeditionary war problem of the War of 1812. Now the forces of "democracy" can kick -butt well outside of America's borders, which would become particularly useful against the Great Satans of modern liberalism such as the Confederate Statre of America and National Socialist Germany. We now had a much more solid officer corps of West Point-indoctrinated attack dogs who would no longer be bothered by those pesky citizen-soldier issues that once plagued militia types.
d) War Against Southern Independence

 

The 20th century of global social sophistication



The 20th century history of government self-perfecting as it grows into a global empire

The roots of ever escalating American social sophistication in the 20th century as WASPs learn to subordinate themselves to Jews and other "minorities."

 

 

 

 

in the historical womb before the real history of America begins.

Between 1776 and 2008 is

Where we are today

Many contemporary libertarians such as Dr. Paul Craig Roberts refer to the United States Government today as being "Neo-Jacobin." Named for the extreme leftist and bloodthirsty Jacobins of the last Terror phase of the French Revolution, "Jacobin" connotes a big, intrusive, authoritarian regime that uses leftist rhetoric to justify its existence.

Indeed, since 1861, the U.S. Government has grown from roughly 5% of GDP to 50%. It has created a central bank run by private bankers that manipulates currency. It has a cozy relationship with national media that gladly fronts for its wars of aggression in the Middle East. It justifies its policies utilizing very leftist and state-authoritarian interpreations of words like "liberty," "democracy," and "freedom."

The "Emotional Logic" of Neo-Jacobin Government

In composing this article, I find it to be simultaneously a very simple and complex story to tell -very simple in its generalities, and extremely complex when we look underneath the hood to examine all the intricate deceptions that have been employed over time to put it in place. It is also very simple in the sense that virtually all American schools and universities teach the neo-Jacobin interpretation of history, but also complex in figuring out a way to tell basically the same story everyone has heard before in a way that does not give accent to the lies that support it.

I believe that the key to understanding the success of neo-Jacobin government involves understanding how it works from a "behavioral finance" or "sociobiological" perspective. This is the concept that our brains remain largely adapted to handling primitive functions in a prehistoric, tribal environment. Our first intuitive approach to address complex social issues is to relate to them as our ancestors did in a primitive environment where the life expectancy was relatively short, there was no formal education, and instinct and a bias for vigorous action counted for a lot to achieve basic genetic survival. The term "emotional" logic is an oxymoron, since we often view emotions as being different and sometimes opposite of cold logic. What I really mean is patterns of emotional-cognitive responses that we can logically understand based upon evolutionary theory.

The "emotional logic" behind "Neo-Jacobinism" lies on the following suppositions:

a) Bigger generally means better

b) The longer something stands the test of time, the better it is.

c) The more symbols of prestige and power our government leaders can accumulate, the more successful and better they must be.

d) Like the way most children see their parents, our leaders must realize that it is in their own best interest to serve our interests as well, therefore better not to say things that might anger them at us and that bites the hand that helps feed us.

e) If we work hard at helping others, they will appreciate it and reciprocate in kind and become better at working with us to help each accomplish our goals.

f) People who spend more time studying certain issues know a lot more than we do, therefore we should let them guide our lives in their area of expertise

That's all folks

The list that I have provided from a) to f) captures most of the philosophy of Jacobin government.

Now in actuality, there are serious limitations which each item. I cover these limitiations in my anarcho libertarian and other sections.

However, for neo-Jacobin government to steadily grow over time, it merely needs to have in place a continuing line of slick politicians who know how to spin-doctor everything to play up to a) to f)) that are felt by the masses.. As long as most people, most of the time, use a) to f) as their decision rules, Jacobin government will continue to grow and succeed.

Edmund Burke once said, "for evil to triumph, good men must do nothing." I tend to believe that if people in general follow their primitive instincts, and only their primitie instincts, that neo-Jacobin government tends to triumph as well. This is why most governments in the world today tend to be socialist, which is basically the same thing in terms of underlying philosoophy as neo-Jacobin.

Understanding the Jacobin Interpretation of American History:

The process is fairly simple. We simply take major historical changes in American history, and sort them into the classifications above from a) to f), and sort in major historical events. Then we simply explain how these events have been spin doctored and reinterpreted to fall within the mentality of a) to f). And that is basically all there is to it.

 

Environmental top down model: It is useful to identify an ideological model that comprises the focus of an ideological viewpoint. With enviornmental top down, man is viewed as programmable, rational actor where instinctive factors are of minimal concern. The top down viewpoint emphasizes the need for special sources of guidance and instruction, ranging from a learned elite to the "guidance" provided by the strong arm powers of the state.






The Null Hypothesis

An important concept in the decision sciences is that all courses of action should generally include a "do nothing" option.

Allied with this, it is helpful to consider alternative historical development scenarios, similar to running simulations.

It is very important that we keep this in mind when viewing American history. Unfortunately we are programmed to have this sense of inevitability about Americann trends. The 20th century becomes more complicated because America becomes so powerful in influential around the world, that it actually makes other countries similar to itself. This reduce our "independent variables." Switzerland finally goes off the gold standard. Japan remains homogeneous, but still adopts many American practices.

Independent variables:

Canada and Australia did not have "American revolutions" but they have preserved a fair amount of liberty. Switzerland did not go off gold standared until mid 1990's, yet sustained good strong long term economic growth. Japan did not give up its homogeneity, but has maintained steady economic growth. Sweden did not chop off heads of its aristocracy, yet has expereicned as much progress as Revolutionary France.

For example, American remained decentralized through over 140 years of the colonial period. The colonies often acted like seperate. Who says that a trend towards centralization had to begin with the Constituiton, and make quantum during the War Between the States, and then start accelerating the 20th century. In the middle ages, countries like France, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, and Iceland remained highly decentralized for over 500 years. Why could not America remain highly decentralized for many more centuries?

Once that sinks in, namely the concept that with a determined effort, American could developed along an altarnative, decentralized, then the analysis of American history gets a lot more interesting.

Ironically, by the year 2050, America will "converge" with the alternative destiny.

There are two "null hypotheses" that are really fascinating:
a) The colonial era as a baseline.
b) The early 1800's as a baseline.

A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE:
Once you accept different premises, American history looks very different. In 1861, we got Jacobin governemnt --and it won. This was like a film noire such as Chinatown where the bad guys win in the end.

Therefore, a trend in society that increases the indoctrination of the great mass of people by special authorities of a centralized government, exercising its police powers to allegedly do what is best for the people, is desirable.

This is the theory. In practice, this viewpoint implies gravitating towards more centralized media, and more centralized, interventionist governmetn, which in turn implies more taxes and regualition.

America started out with a philosophy that distrust government centralization and thought control; therefore, certainly key element of our historical analysis is to look at key points that caused Americans to become seduced. What were the ideological "lines" that accomplished this seduction process.

The end game is "neo-Jacobinims" -what we have today.

Concept that the U.S. created the states rather than the other way around

Central government must be more powerful than state governments.

Business cannot run itself

The Economy cannot run itself

The government is a better protector of the rights of citizens than the citizens themselves.

People cannot run themselves without government guidance.

A good starting point for historical analysis is to look at anomalies and contradictions:

Here some examples. Dr. Thomas Woods points out that during the colonial period, the colonies resisted three major efforts to unite. Yet they seemed to be very prosperous for their era, with a high quality of local self-government. Today we are told that America must remain "indivisible" to preserve our prosperity. What is going on here?

Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson were adamant that a central bank is generally bad as a monopolist of money and credit. This form of monopoly is no different than the ill effects of any other form of business or political monopoly. Yet today Americans are told that the economy cannot function without the central planning and direction of the Federal Reserve. What is going on here?

 

One of the best ways to begin to analyze American history is to look at the extreme contradictions.

For example, during 140 of colonial history, Americans seemed to be fairly happy and properous for their time. Interestingly enough, their political attitudes on many important issues were almost exact opposite of attitudes today.

Take for example the concept of

In the colonial period, each colony often acted like a seperate country. They resisted three major efforts to become more united. Back then, retaining soverignty meant right of exit, such as when Roger Williams left Massachusetts for Rhode. It also meant the ability to avoid being absorbed into a centralized tyranny. In other words, the sovereignty of Pennsylvania allowed Quakers to have more independence than if they got absorbed by New England Puritans, who they often despised.

To summarize, ever since the War Betweent he States, Americans have been brainwashed (thorught he Pledge of Allegiance and other devices) to think that a nation indivisible is a good thing. In contrast, the colonials thought the opposite was true -namely avoiding union.

Let us take another issue. Back then, Puritans had very strong ethno-racial homogeneity and roots.

The study of the environmental top down viewpoint is a look at the process in which Americans have been seduced into becoming functionaries within a centralzied empire, stripped of their self-sufficiency. We look at the sweet dreams they have been sold in exchange indiviidual freedomw and self-sufficiency.

What are the gritty behind the scenes power plays, selfish special interests, and ideological "Playmate" fantasies that have promulgated the following social/political seduction trends. Was done mostly in increments, similar to proverbial frog that fails to jump out of water if temperature is turned up slowly enough.

Behavioral Finance perspective

This is the concept that the human brain is adapted to small tribal situations based upon its evolutionary situation, has extreme cognitive problems comprehending situations that arise in large, complex, mass urban societies.

I believe that at the root of the environmental top down perspective is very primitive reasoning. It is the idea of that bigger means better. More territory is good. More power is good. Therefore, because empire-building means getting bigger, acquiring more territory, and more power, this is good. Other issues, such as assimilating disparate peoples, are minor issues so long as your own group can reap the rewards of empire-building.

There is truth here. Throughout most of human evolution, where humans have functioned in small tribal bands, generally bigger does mean better. The bigger warrior can subdue smaller warriors. More territory means more game and less chance of starving. More warriors means better chances of beating a rival group. Last but not least, people have evolved to feel that it is good to be part of a herd that is getting bigger and stronger.

Certainly people with the experience of starting their own businesses can understand as well that up until they achieve a certain critical mass in terms of sales, inventory, customer backlog, and seasoned relationships, size and control of resources is a vital issue.

What the human brain does not comprehend very well is the concept that beyond a certain size level, human organizations become dysfunctional. They become less innovative and their rulers become more tyrannical. Furthermore, when the herd shows signs of going in this direction, it is a good thing for individuals to oppose the leadership of the herd to support the long term interests of the herd against the abuses of power of its leaders.

I am convinced now convinced that for most people, the idea of opposing the herd to avoid abuse of power is too abstract and emotionally too dissonant.

Therefore, the growth of the environmental top-down super state is at root very simple. Convince people that the continued growth of government and empire is the good trend of the good herd, and pooh-pooh concerns about symptoms that this trend may be taking some bad turns. It helps to have lawyer-politicians who are experts at hornswoggling juries and a national media controlled by Jews with a proud three thousand year ancestral history of selilng snake oil to the masses.

Seduction trends:

Since this is "top down" take more of an ideological, macro-social viewpoint. The anacho-libertarians, more focused on the mechanics of the changes and effects on individual choice, how changes served selfish interests.

Seduced into leftist or universalistic religious economic and religious philosophies Christianity tends to be very leftist. Same for Marxism, Socialism, Keynesian, whig theory of history economics.
Seduction into neo-Jacobin ideology. A lot of libertarians like to call the U.S. Govenrment today "neo-Jacobin." This comes from the Jacobins who highjacked the French Revolution. Jacobinism came before Karl Marx was born. It a more vague form of leftist statism. Nevertheless, with the Reign of Terror and aggressive campaigns of Napoleon across Europe, it certainly got a lot of people killed. Underlying principle is state is entitled use extreme authoritarian meansures, to include miltiary force both domestically and abroad, to effect a radical leftist restructing of society.
Seduction into imperialism (both an internal "nation indivisible" empire as well as international "policemen" imperialism). U.S. went from unpredicable and poorly coordinated state militias to a giant mailed fist and huge standing army and navy poised to crush any potential rival anywhere on the planet.
Seduction into high taxation
Seduction into fiat currency
Seduction into surrender of white ethno-racial self-determination
Seduction into surrender of individual liberty.
Seduced into following a cult of personality of Presidents
Seduced in yielding power of Congress to Presidents.
Seduced into increasingly leftist lifestyles
Seduction into enfranchising leftist coalitions.
Seduced by sociopathic personalities: Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Lyndon Johnson. Winston Churchill. In decadent societies, sociopaths rise to the top and accelerate the decline. Sociopaths live purely by might makes right, and ideas should be used as weapons and be completely decoupled from finding truth. The success of a sociopath is both a cause and effect; reflects a society willing to ignore sacrifices of principled men.
Seduced into hating right wing enemies
Seduced into war
Seduced into any form centralized government at all
Maybe both the U.S.Constitution and the U.S. Government was themselves a big mistake. The colonies should have simply created mutual defense and free trade agreements, but never gone the extra step of creating a Federal government.
Seduction from open, pro-white nationalism to a unique blend of internationalism where white nationalism is "bad" and Jewish and non-white nationalism is good
Seduction from a strong belief in character and individual responsibility as a key determinant of success to a broad, sociological view that people are largely victims or beneficiaries of circumstance.
A strong change in the level of honesty. "Honor" systems for selling goods have largely evaporated across the country. Hardened security requirements have multiplied.
Seduction from a belief that government is flawed and dangerous to a belief that increasing levels of government is wise and inevitable. (For example adding U.N., Federal police, etc).

Seduction into empire:
This took place in increments. First, seduction into expansion into a contiguous land empir to benefit land speculators and settlers.
Second, conquest of the independent Confederate States of America.
Third, conquest of overseas Third Terriorty in Spanish Ameircan War
Fourth: Use as overseas imperials pawns in major European War.

The increasingly suggestive "strip tease" of this seduction process involved sending in Marines. Went from retaliatory raids to pre-emptive aggression. naked invasions.

Using U.S. Armed forces.

Top down historical forces

Beginning in the mid 19th century, major newspaper chains. "You supply the pictures, I supply the war. " Civil War "The last of the old, beginning of the new."

Media consolidation went from bad to worse in 20th century. Americans watch television seven hours a day. The history of America in this period is as much a virtual reality world as the real world of industrial production and troop movements. In the virtual reality world, the fact that Fess Parker playing Daniel Boone feels about Indians and his son named "Israel," or the fact that Lucy has a Latino husband (Desi Arnez) or CBS anchor Walter Conkrite turns cool on Vietnam (LBJ commented "When I lose Conkrite, I lose middle America), or what Johnny Carson or Jayo Leno think counts for more. Some interesting theories that John Lennon was assassinated because he was becoming too powerful against the establishment.

Decoupled from farm self-sufficiency, tangibles, and direct experience. Highly specialized jobs, blur male and female roles. Did not have in 19th century organized crime and ADL actively suppressing dissent.

Cui Bono?

This is another important tool:

The environmental top down viewpoint can very attractive to academics and bureaucrats. For starts, it is a terrific ego trip where they get to tell other people what to do. Bob Whitaker talks about this egotism in Why Johnny Can't Think.

By ignoring race, ethnicity, and other "genetic" factors, they do not have to hang their ethno-racial "genitals" in public and create more sterile reports that have broader mass market appeal.

Hidden Power:

A lot of the appeal of empire-building is very simple: People have a very primitive sense that bigger means better. More symbols of power means more real power. Therefore, government growth is good because government can create more empire and more symbols of power. It is hard to keep people's out of the cookie jar when demogogues promise more power and more goodies through more government.

Two other important (and neglected) tools of historical analysis:

Follow the Money

The development of "wag the dog" statist mythologies. What we are talking about here are lies told by the government through its court intellectuals in state-funded universities about economic and political theory to justify its continued expansion. Often the mythologies are not so much lies as they are the exceptions to the rule that are made to appear like the rule.

Some "usual suspects" in the development of statist mythologies, such as "cult of personality," militarism, and fascism. Let me start out with my own "quick and dirty" definitions of these terms.

Statism involves an authoritarian belief that the development of state symbols and institutions is a crucial end in itself. Fascism is an extreme form of statism that seeks to entertwine the state as a partner with the corporate world and regulate and dominate all aspects of society. Communism is an extreme form of fascism that seeks to abolish private property and free markets and put everything in the hands of state direction. Militarism is a belief that martial virtues and allegience to state authority should erase or supercede civilian values and permeate all aspects of society.

Some "usual suspects" in the development of statist economic mythologies are as follows: justification for a permanent central bank, a belief that one can only acquire acess to foreign markets through military conquest, and the belief that government war spending is a better stimulus for economic develoment than the free enterprise economy.

The general trend of American history over the last two hundred years is that all of these statist mythologies have deeply infected all strata of American society and have been piling up like crazy like barnacles on the hull of a ship.

 

The whole philosophical structure of American government today is almost the exact opposite of what it once was during the administration of Thomas Jefferson. In the early 1800's America had almost no government by contemporary standards. The society was heavily based on private property rights. It was openly white racial nationalist, as defined by the immigration act of 1790. It was also wary of foriegn entanglements. Finally, America was focused on the internal development of science, technology, and local industry. These elements comprised an ideological package commonly referred to as 19th century classical liberalism.

Today, the American government has become a global super state that dominates all areas of America life. It routinely violates private property rights with massive wealth redistributions. It also promotes anti-white multiracialism and internationalism. It is also a bullying global super cop and hit man for Israel. Trading paper and running up debt is more important than manufacturing real and useful things at home.

Tthe transition over the last two hundred years has been so extreme, that both classical liberals and classical conservatives of the 19th century seem to play in the same intellectual sand box compared to their counter parts today. In regard to such issus as U.S. entanglements abroad, state intervention in the economy, and subordination of the individual to the state, both modern liberals and modern conservatives are almost the exact opposite of both 19th century classical liberals and classical conseratives.

Using the matrix scheme portrayed above, over a two hundred year period, America moved diagonally upward from a "genetic bottom up" or "libertarian racial nationalist" philosophical position to an "environmental top down" position. According to many libertarians, what we have today might be refered to as "liberal fascism" or "the Orwellian neo-Jacobin Welfare Warfare Global Super State that Wages Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace." (my favorite phrase).

At the risk of oversimplifying, American history can be divided into two broad parts.

The first is American history leading up to the War Between the States. This was the era of "true federalism" and a genuine limited republic. During this era, government was kept below 5% of GDP. America repeatedly rejected the efforts to install two central banks in favor of a decentalized hard money system. States passed laws against public works projects, seeing them as corrupt boondoggles.

In this era of the limited republic, American political leaders believed that government was at the very best a necessary evil. "True federalists," such as Thomas Jefferson, believed that the central government must be kept weaker than the states. Furthermore, Jefferson stated in his Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 that the threat of secession was the most effective form of defense of individual liberty in existence. Jeffeson also commented that "When government fears the people, you have liberty. When people fear the governmennt, you have tyranny."

The second era commenced with the Abraham Lincoln dictatorship during the War Between the States. The national ideology transitioned from "true federalism" to "neo-Jacobinism." The Jacobin revolution fomented by Lincoln retreated somewhat in the late 1800's, but then became a permanent fixture with the creation of the income tax and the privately owned Federal Reserve Banking System in 1913. During the Woodrow Wilson Administration, we saw dramatic curtailment of civil liberties and expansion of federal bureaucracy following America's massive foreign entanglement in a Great European War in 1917. Today total govenment taxes about 50% of GDP (to include local, state, excise, federal, and other taxes) and employs about 25% of the work force. Today most Americans are very fearful of their government.

In this era of neo-Jacobin ideological "air superiority" promulgated by America's controlled national media, government is no longer viewed as a necessary evil. Rather, "Jacobinism" means that government becomes an appropriate and necessary instrument to effect leftist social reengineering schemes. It becomes a Warm and Wonderful Thing that can allegedly solve all our social problems, shrewdly create wealth, and wisely dispense "social justice." Creating more government size, regulation, and intervention means creating more "Wonderful." Government now knows best, such whether or not to bother our pretty little heads about who killed John F. Kennedy or why we should worry about depleted uranium or Israeli nukes or other trifling details that surely only government technocrats can really understand. All of this increasingly became the New Revelation taught in our colleges and universities after World War I.

Some obvious analytical questions

How did all of this happen? Furthermore, we might ask if this incredible transition was ever really necessary or desirable. How might it have it have been avoided?

What are the major historical milestones in which America took big jumps both in the size of government and the redistribution of wealth and political rights? What were the underlying causes?

Why did classical liberals both in America and Great Britain, who originally stood for limited government and prevention of special privilege at the beginning of the 19th century, morph into favoring the opposite by the end of the 19th century?

Important metrics:

A number of measures of the growth of "neo-Jacobinism"
a) Tax policy: become more pervasive, intrusive, and coercive. An excellent article that describes how all these characteristics have steadily grown over the last two hundred years is "A Brief Tax History of America" by Charles Adams.
b) Government as a share of GDP, and its intervention in the economy
c) Growth of quasi-religious governmental monuments and Leni Reifenstahl-type ceremonial activities; cult of personality.
d) Social functioning index;; ability of people in general to accomplish basic tasks: level of literacy, level of corruption, ability to meet obligations, ability. For example, according to "One Question Test" by Linda Shrock in 1812 a source claimed that only four in a thousand Americans could not read and do numbers well (probably all white then, she ignores integration of blacks).

Inverse indicators:
As government grows, conversely an indicator that local political power is in decline, family and tribal units eroding, individuals more atomized, hence harder to resist gravitation of power to the central government.

In this view, the ideological justification to benefit the many comes first, the power play comes second.

This is the opposite of the libertarian perspective, to be covered later, that insiders are predators who are continually trying to make power grabs, and once they succeed, they invent new ideologies to justify their criminal behavior. Dr. Murray Rothbard used to refer to governments as "criminal gangs."

A litany of platitudes and untested assumptions, after the fact, because of the fact reasoning.

a) Governments improve in knowledge and wisdom over time (then why did ancient civilizations collapse?)
b) Our political leaders are basically well-intentioned, rational, and learn from their mistakes.
c) You can make people nicer, more reasonable, and more competent simply by teaching them to be that way, regardless of their respective power positions or racial, ethnic background.
d) Government embodies some kind of mystical or supermagical, transcendent force of goodness and righteousness.

A confession:

To properly write up this environmental top down section, I feel like a public defense lawyer who is assigned the task of representing in criminal court a child molester and serial killer that he knows to be guilty.. Please, dear reader, forgive me if I find it very hard to do this at times...but this viewpoint does deserve a defense.

Perhaps the strongest defense that I can muster is that the government and privileged special interests have some valid arguments. My bias comes from a belief that these arguments represent the exceptions rather than the rule. America's controlled media has waged a relentless propaganda campaign for generations to make the exceptions become the rule in people's minds, and consequently turn this country on its head.

The usual refrain to justify making the exceptions the rule is "This time is different." This time we have a genuinely "new thing" and a brave new world.


Some important definitions

I use terms such as "statism," "fascism," and "Jacobinism," and "mercantilism." This article is about America's steady march from relatively simple, honest, and decentralized government very close to the citizenry in the colonial period to a very aloof, fascistic, and globally imperialistic central government over the span of two hundred years. The ideology that has helped to justify this devolution can be broadly termed "neo-Jacobinism."

Generally speaking, there is usually no one single criterion that can define each individual term such as "statism," "jingoism," "fascism," "Jacobinism," and "mercantilism." Rather, these terms typically involve a laundry list of charachterisitcs that when taken together, show a pattern that helps to confirm an overall diagnosis.

As an example of some complexities, under President Theodore Roosevelt the U.S. Government was extremely "statist" in tone, style, and spirit. However, the government had not yet implanted internal institutions in peacetime such as a privately controlled central bank, income tax, and national police force (such as the FBI, ATF and Dept of Homeland Security) that could efficiently transmit state power among the general populace in peacetime. While the U.S. Government had created a central bank and an income tax under the Abraham Lincoln dictatorship, these measures had been viewed by most Americans as temporary wartime exigencies and had been largely disbanded by the time of Teddy Roosevelt. In essence, while the Federal Government had become very statist in style, it still lacked underlying fascist infrastructure. In fact, America still had enormous pockets of the old lassiz fair, limited republican system that had preceeded the Lincoln dictatorship.

Despite real world complexities, I believe that I can offer some brief definitions that help the reader get a working sense of what these terms mean.

Statism is the belief that perpetually developing the institutions which characterize a "state" is desirable as an end in itself. People typically associate the state with an executive office, a representative or advisory body, a military, a post office, a court system, police, and various administrative offices that claim to represent, monitor, or regulate vital functions of a country. Symbols include a flag, national anthem, and monuments to military victories. Statist symbols often include very expensive meeting areas and executive offices that look like giant Roman Temples or Baroque palaces that are meant to awe citizens with a magical sense of grandeur regarding their government.

Sometimes the motives behind statism are dark. For example, international bankers like statism, because it creates within a country a strong single source who can claim the authority to take on more loans. The Diary of an Economic Hitman talks about how international bankers often like to feed loans to developing countries in the same cynical manner that pushers like to foist drugs on potential addicts. Similarly, an important motive by America's New York City-based financial elite for the creation of the U.S. Constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation was to better consolidate Revolutionary war debt held by different states within a stronger Federal government to make debt collection easier.

Significantly, one can also define terms such as "statism" by what a society is not. For example, in its public discourse a statist society tends to reject the Hayekian concept of spontaneous order and the importance of decentralizing decision nodes in a complex society, or the belief that government bureaucracy is vastly less efficient than the private sector, or the libertarian view that government is an inherently dangerous predator and that centralization leads to corruption and tyranny.

Jingoism This is a brand of "selective patriotism" that focuses on statism to the exclusion of most other patriotic values, to include loyalty to the survival of ones own race, ethnicity, and to anti-tyrannical republican principles, all of which constitute the deeper components of nationalism and popular soveriegnty. In contrast to the Jingoist who tends to remain blindly loyal to the U.S. Government regardless of how corrupt and abusive it might become, the true patriot is prepared to engage in open dissent, civil disobedience, or promote more extreme measures such as agitate for a national strike, secession, or the revolutionary overthrow of the U.S. Government if it becomes a tyranny, a Jewish supremacist lap dog, or promotes various forms of racial and cultural genocide towards white people.

Fascism is a severe form of statism where government engages in massive intervention in the economy and suppression of political rights on almost all levels. "Corporatism" is a term used by Mussolini to denote the way government becomes a major partner with select businesses, generally granting special privileges, subsidies, monopolies, and exemptions from free market competition.

It is important to note that the existence of large, authoritarian corporations alone does not in itself necessarily imply "fascism" or its analog "corporatism." In fact, there have been many large corporations that have tried to operate with decentralized management systems and avoid government subsidy. An important criterion for fascism exists when corporations of any size partner up with the government in ways that grant businesses special privileges and seriously distorts or crowds out the free market.

When a government completely takes over private industry, that is usually called some form of socialism or communism. However, when government relaxes its tentacles just enough so that the private sector still has a pulse and can barely breathe, that tends to be fascism by default.

Another important symptom of fascism is the extent to which the government tries to focus the public's attention on visions of grandeur and turn itself into a quasi-religious icon, often as a smokescreen to hide its own failings or its need to run rough shod over the interests of certain citizen groups.

A fascist government usually has it hands on all the levers of power necessary to impose its will on most sectors of society. It controls a central bank, which enables it to print money and effectively tax its citizenry without representation (inflation is a form of hidden taxation). Fascist government itself, or more commonly the oligarchy behind the scenes that controls the fascist government, almost always controls national media and can freely propandize citizens with highly edited information. Fascist governments typically engage in central planning and heavy regulation of the economy, giving the government the ability to make, break, or indirectly subvert businesses at will, to include businesses run by political rivals such as Henry Ford's Ford Motor Company. (Ford was subverted by such measures as state-supported leftist organized labor agitation, hostile Jewish controlled national media, an attempt by an unknown source to run him off the road, and the possibility that FDR would haul him before his Great Sedition Show Trial of 1944 for his involvement with the America First Committee). Lastly, fascist government has numerous national enforcement agencies, such as the IRS, ATF, and FBI, that can arbitrarily intimidate citizens with the threat of harsh penalties for minor infractions.

It is very common for governments in time of war to enact extreme measures that make them de facto fascist entities. War, or a phony pretext for war, is a major historical reason why many countries have resorted to fascism. Central planning used to aid a war effort also helps to condition the public to accept close government involvement with private industry on a permanent basis.

The threat of communist takeover is another important reason why some societies such as Spain and Italy became fascist in the 1920's and 1930's. In this case, one authoritarian system was deemed necessary to pre-empt another, on the theory that fascist societies are more likely to eventually return back towards libertarian institutions once crises have passed than communist countries.

Jacobinism is a leftist ideology that generally seeks to run roughshod over ethnic, racial, and regional differences to create an integrated social order under a supreme government in service of a leftist social vision. It not only exhalts an authoritarian state in service to leftist ideals, but apologizes for coercive measures that implement social re-engineering schemes. "Legitimate" techniques for spreading its social gospel schemes might include mass guillotine executions of own citizens, marching on Russia, or crushing the Confederate States of American and imposing an onorous "Reconstruction."

Mercantilism involves active measures taken by goverment to tax, regulate, or steer international trade. On a scale that measures government economic manipulation, mercantilism is a quantum level above protective tarrifs, which tend to simply serve as fairly passive excise taxes on international trade. However, mercantilism as also tends to be a quantum level below full-blown fascism, because it can pertain to narrowly focused economic manipulation by the government that does not necessarily imply government efforts to manipulate the rest of society. Significantly, the permanent existence of protective tariffs can help shape a class of spoiled, greedy, arrogant industrialists who then campaign to grab more power and privilege with mercantilism. This in turn can set the stage for the development of an even greedier faction that eventually pushes for full-blown fascism. By the same token, it is also true that protective tarrifs do not necessarily lead to mercanitilism and then on to fascism any more than smoking cigarettes necessarily lead on to smoking marijuana and then on the heroin addiction. Nevertheless, libertarians feel that these things point in the wrong direction.

The evolution of the Necessary Evil up until 1861

As we trace the evolution of burgeoning Federal government, there some important baseline facts we need to establish about the colonial period

First, the original thirteen colonies frequently acted like independent countries. They had their own legislatures. They often raised their own militias for seperate military campaigns. For example, Massachusetts raised militias to raid Frenchmen in Nova Scotia, Virginia raised militias to fight French and Indians in western Pennsylvania, and Georgia raised militias to fight in Spanierds in Florida. Sometimes a colony would refuse a request by another colony for troops to support in a campaign. Interestingly enough, in the Peace Treaty of 1783 that ended the American Revolution, Great Britain recognized each colony as if it were a separate soverign state.

In his book The End of Kings: A History of Republics and Repulicans, William Everdell talks about how these early colonial legislatures were republican in nature. While they certainly were not "politically correct" by contemporary standards, given that voting and participation was generally restricted to white males with property, they were amazingly honest, efficient, and responsive to local needs by contemporary standards. During this approximate 140 year period in early American history, Everdell thinks America had some of the best governments in its history. You would never guess this from most contemporary textbooks that keep most of this in the memory hole. Instead, modern liberal historican like to extol the era of highly centralized federal government that strong-arms the modern liberal agenda.

A second important fact is that Americans had virtually no government by contemporary standards. Almost everything was handled on a grass roots level. All charity was privatized. Many state functions relied heavily on local volunteer help, such a helping law enforcement, manning militias, and running fire departments. There were no income taxes. For most people, the only time they ever had contact with government up through the early 1800's was when they went to the Post Office.

A third important fact is that the American Revolution was a basically a libertarian revolution. Americans opposed taxation and British mercantilist policies that sought to restrain their trade. They opposed distant and authoritarian government control. You can read further details in the Declaration of Independence. They are all fundamentally libertarian in nature.

Significantly, most New Englanders traced their ancestors back to Puritans who fought on the Parliamentary side of the English Civil War. They had long historical memories stretching back to Anglo-Saxons who suffered under the "Norman Yoke." There were also Scotch-Irish and Celtic peoples among the colonists with their own heroic and long historical memories. They had inalienable rights by virtue of their ancestry, heritage, and manliness that were completely distinct from government. They provided for themselves in the Wilderness and created government only to the extent that it served their needs, not the other way around. They did not need government to give to them anything, but rather regarded government growth as potential nuisance and source of tyranny that had to be constrainted.

All the verbiage not only within their state constitutions, but also within the Articles of Confederation and U.S. Constitution describe what government cannot do. These documents did not give any one any rights. These men -- and their ancestors going back through time immemorial -- had always had their natural rights.

Since the colonies had previously acted like independent countries for about 140 years, it was enough of a leap just to create the Articles of Confederation under wartime conditions during the War of Independence.

Significantly, it was another big leap to go from the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution in 1787. Government became significantly more centralized. So much so, in fact, that it set alarm bells among many patriot leaders such as Patrick Henry and George Mason who became known as the "anti-Federalists." (Actually they were the "true federalists" since they wanted a central government weaker than the state governments). America First Books hopes to publish the Anti-Federalist Papers, collected by Morton in 1965, in the not too distant future.

Dr. Murray Rothbard claims that the Constitution was in many ways a step back for liberty compared to the Articles of Confederation. According to Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo, the so-called "Federalists" who pushed it were typically merchants and financiers who wanted to simply replace the British mercantilist system with a similar American system. "Mercantilism" means that government gives special privileges to certain select corporations. A system where government forms partnerships with corporations is also known as "corporatism," and this is typically an ingredient of "fascism." Many of these "federalists" also wanted a stronger government to collect on the Revolutionary War debt. They also wanted to support a central bank in support of New York and foreign banking interests. And in fact after the Constitution was installed, the Federal Government assumed the revolutionary war debts of the states.

Dr. Rothbard claims that most rural Americans opposed the U.S. Constitution in favor of keepiing things "as is" under the Articles of Confederation.. America had been through a recession in the mid-1780's that Federalists falsely blamed on weak government, but in fact this was an inevitable consequence of economic adjustment following Revolutionary War inflation. In addition, Federalists used their influence in the post office to hold up the mail of anti-Federalists to impede their ability to organize against them. They also high-jacked a convention originally intended to discuss amending the Articles of Confederation and turned it into a convention to create the Constitution.

Patrick Henry felt that the Constitution appealed too much to a "military mind." He predicted that if it passed, within about sixty years Northerners would invade his state of Virginia. (He was off by only a couple of decades!) Other anti-Federalists had the attitude that there was nothing so broke that it had to be fixed. After all, most of the colonies had already successfully functioned like separate countries for nearly 150 years. Why did they need to take an extra step towards centralization beyond the Articles of Confederation?

According to Gary North in "Conspiracy in Philadelphia," the U.S. Constitution was never properly ratified. Despite these reservations, the U.S. Constitution got foisted on America, and United States got its eleventh president with George Washington (that is, if we do not distinguish between the "President of the United States" under the Constitution and "President of the United States In Congress" under the Artilces of Confederation) The prior eleven presidents had served a one year term each under the Articles of Confederation. However, they usually are not mentioned in contemporary American history textbooks.

American political history up until 1861 is basically a tug of war back and forth between centralizers seeking special privilege and libertarians seeking to preserve decentralization, with the swings typically getting bigger over time and generally netting out more in favor of the centralizers, whose low cunning and financial power frequently took advantage of the ignorance and apathy of the common people.

I do not have time or space to give a blow-by-blow accounting of the swing actions back and forth, but I will try to at least gloss over the highlights.

Swinging in the direction of the more powerful, centralized social order, we have the following are some examples.

The centralizers

I have already discussed the "Conspiracy in Philadelphia," as author Gary North puts it, regarding the nefarious way that the U.S. Constitution usurped the Articles of Confederation. At the time of the usurpation, America had already had ten Presidents of the United States in Congress Assembled. In contemporary histories, we somehow have to drop "in Congress Assembled" off the title to start U.S. history with a real president.

The Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. President Washington raised and led an army larger than what he had at the Battle of Yorktown to suppress a relatively small rebellion over whiskey taxes in Western Pennsylvania. A number of contemporaries such as Thomas Jefferson were very disturbed by the authoritarian overtones of this muscle flexing. According to Dr. Murray Rothbard, the rebellion melted away and the army expedition to Western Pennsylvania turned into a realtive non-event. Twenty rebels were captured, and two who were tried, convicted, and pardoned. Nonethelss, many historians idolize this Fed-flexing because this kind of thing would later serve the modern liberal agenda.

Washington's Administration accompanied the creation of a first central bank under Alexander Hamilton. It was not renewed when its charter expired. Then a second central bank that created to help finance the War of 1812 was eliminated by Andrew Jackson.

Dr. Rothbard refers to Alexander Hamilton as the "Mephistophelean character of the American Revolution." Everything he did pushed in the exact opposite direction of the anti-Federalists and Thomas Jefferson.

President John Adams foisted the Alien and Sedition Laws to suppress criticism of his adminstration. This expired.

Thomas Jefferson used extra Constitutional means to make the Lousiana Purchase. This helped positioned America as a fast-growth de facto continental empire, dependent on government to aid acquistions, with an emphasis on encouraging mass cheap labor immigration to fuel growth, as opposed to positioning itself as a slower growth limited republic more selective about its citizenry.

West Point was created in response to the failure of American militias to successfully invade Canada during the War of 1812. It started creating officer cadre for a de facto professional standing army that would be capable of leading imperial ventures outside of state lines.

Andrew Jackson, a Southerner, made a serious threat of using Federal force to prevent South Carolina during the nullification crisis.

President Tyler of "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" fame was an example of a federally-funded Indian fighter. In contrast to Tennessee and Kentucky, which were largely settled by private initiatives, much of the Ohio and Illinois country and other points further west were cleared by Federal troops. This, combined with the Lousiana Purchase, gave many Americans the sense that the U.S. Government created the states rather than the other way around.

In fact, the idea that the U.S. Government created the states was a point made by Lincoln as a justification later on to invade the South. However, in regard to the original thirteen colonies this was a ridiculous statement, since they created the U.S. Government and at times functioned almost like independent countries.

President Polk deliberately sent U.S. forces into Mexican territory where he knew they would likely skirmish as a pretext to launch a war of conquest against Mexico and grab land all the way to the Pacific. Again, Americans are made to feel dependent on the Federal Government as a benevolent provider of land and other goodies.

The Whig Party, which in America and England originally consisted of emergent industrialists and entrepreneurs, morphed from demanding limited government and curbing special privilege to becoming a party that sought the opposite. They looked for ways to gain special privilege through government spending on public works, raising tarrifs, and the creation of a central bank. The Whigs would later become the Republicans under Abraham Lincoln. A key theoretician was Henry Clay, proponant of the so-called "American System" of protectionism, a central bank, and public works.

The decentralizers

In response to the Alien and Sedition Acts, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison published the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions respectively. They asserted the doctrine of nullification, and the right of states to secede to preserve liberty.

Thomas Jefferson downsized the Federal government as President. He also repealed the Alien and Sedition Acts.

Aaron Burr courted efforts to break off part of the West to couterbalance Federal monopoly power. President Thomas Jefferson seems to "understand" and lets him wangle his way out of a treason trial. Later, Burr kills the "Mephistophelean Character of the American Revolution" in a duel. This a direct action kind of guy.

New England states threatened secession over Federal policy regarding the War of 1812. Sadly, they fail to follow through to save themselves from becoming an imperial pain in the rear to the South in 1861.

South Carolina threatened secession during the Tarrif of abominations episode.

Andrew Jackson eliminated the second Bank of the United States. A central tenant of Jacksonian Democracy and 19th century populism remained hard money and absence of a central bank.

Private citizens fight war of indepedence and establish the Republic of Texas in 1835. They satisfactorily run their own Lone Star Republic for ___ years within succumbing to absorption with the Federal Collective.

Henry C. Calhoun emerged as one of America's articulate theoreticians of states rights and laissez faire business.

Mormons establish their independent society in Utah. They attempt to fight the "Mormon War" of ___ before being involuntarily absorbed into the Federal Collective.

Martin Van Buren helped to reduce government. He avoided war with Canada. He resisted government intervention after the stock market crash of 1842. The economy healed itself and rebounded strongly within two years as a consequence of his laissez faire policies.

States passed their own immigration laws. For example, Illinois and Oregon passed laws in the 1850's preventing free Negros from entering their states, not to mention slaves which were outlawed.

America's first liberal fascist blow-out orgy

Now we come to 1861 and Saint Abraham Lincoln. I have written extensively about Saint Abe in my top down vs. bottom up section. Also, please visit all of Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo's articles in the King Lincoln archive at lewrockwell.com. Dr. DiLorenzo is author of The Real Lincoln, well worth reading. Dr. DiLorenzo's articles provide important background on the evil side of Lincoln.

It is a fact that Lincoln maneuverd the South into firing the first shot that started the war. He summarily arrested tens of thousands of people, destroyed freedom of the press, and ran roughshod over the Constitution whenever it pleasured him. He laughed uproariously when Union war criminal William T. Sherman briefed him about his rampaging army's atrocities in the South. He approved of prisoner of war conditions where men were deliberately exposed to sewage-contaminated water and half of them died. His brain was infected with syphallis, and there is strong evidence that he was a homosexual. As Sam Dickson observed in "Shattering the Icon of Abraham Lincoln," he routinely talked out of both sides of his mouth on every major issue. According to Dr. DiLorenzo, prior to becoming President, he was the leading political fixer in Illinois, and enriched himself and his political patrons with corrupt boondogles.

I could go on in some depth, but suffice to say that I am now convinced that no reasonable person can examine all the evidence without agreeing with author L. Neil Smith that Lincoln was truly the "American Lenin." Furthermore, Saint Abe's influence has been so pivotal to American history that one cannot duck this reality. You have to deal with it head on. He was a very twisted and evil man who did more damage to America than most other Presidents.

One of Saint Abe's greatest "contributions" is the fact that under the stress of wartime his evil genius found a way to push American imperial statism to its absolute limit. He proved that if you can sugar coat tyranny with just the right Jacobin rhetoric, Americans will swallow it. He showed the formula by which American politicians can oppress Americans a hundred times worse than King George III -- and get away with it. He showed how a clever internal enemy can conquor America from within. That, apart from 640,000 American war dead and the destruction of half the wealth of the South, was his most terrible legacy.

One example of Lincoln's many Satanic sugar-coated deceptions was his Gettysburg Address. The American Old Right writer H.L. Mencken was entirely correct when he observed that the Southern cause of State's rights and independence was vastly more attuned to the spirit and letter of the Declaration of Independence than the Union cause, yet Lincoln twisted this document to make it appear that it favored Northern aggression to re-absorb the South into the Union collective at all costs. Mencken observed that Lincoln's words had nothing to do with facts and logic, and everything to do with poetry, emotion, and magical thinking.

After the smoke finally cleared in that terrible war, the great unfulfilled task for following generations of unscrupulous leaders was to exploit in peacetime the parasite vulnerabilities that Lincoln uncovered in wartime. In gratitude, our emerging new ruling elites in the 20th century firmly established Saint Abe as a Holy Fixture in the virtual reality matrix they foisted on the public, as they proceeded to permanently implement in peacetime the horrors that Lincoln had pioneered in wartime, such as brutal national media control, a central bank, an income tax, and imperialistic aggression in service to Jacobin ideals.

Georgia Lawyer Sam Dickson points out in his work "Shattering the Icon of Abraham Lincoln," that what is now popularly accepted as the "Whig Theory of History" is in reality a secular mythology. Dickson explained:

The astonishing thing about this paper on Abraham Lincoln is that it is needed at all or is considered controversial. In my opinion, one does not have to be a scholar to ferret out obscure and suppressed facets of history to see Abraham Lincoln as he was.

My views on this subject are not unusual. They are those of the overwhelming majority of Southerners both immediately before, during and for decades after the War between the States. My views were also shared by many in the North and the West. Only the passage of time and the studious cultivation of the myth of Abraham Lincoln, coupled with his timely death (timely in the sense of being providential for his place in history) have caused Abraham Lincoln to be raised to the level of a sacred cow in American history.

Nevertheless, even contemporary events show that the place and role of Abraham Lincoln in American history are a subject which is very sensitive to the Establishment. When Professor M. E. Bradford of the University of Dallas was nominated by President Reagan to head the National Endowment for the Humanities, a storm of abuse and controversy exploded. Professor Bradford's sin was that he had the effrontery to criticize Abraham Lincoln. The New York Times launched the attack, followed by a host of other establishment liberal spokesmen and institutions and joined by so-called "neo-conservatives" such as George Will. Mr. Will excoriated Professor Bradford as "the nostalgic Confederate remnant of the Conservative movement" and made it clear that neo-conservatives have no use for any criticism of Abraham Lincoln.[1] Obviously, Professor Bradford touched a raw and sensitive nerve when he criticized a president who has been dead for over 120 years. One wonders after the lapse of so many years why this matter is such a vital, important and sensitive one.

Part of the reason for the importance of Abraham Lincoln in the iconography of the left is explained by the Whig Theory of History which is shared by most leftists in one form or another. The Whig Theory of History holds that history, in particular the history of the English-speaking peoples, is the history of freedom broadening down from precedent to precedent as progress is made away from tradition, authority, monarchy, and aristocracy toward democracy and egalitarianism. The leftist adherents to the Whig Theory of History see Lincoln as part of a continuum running from Runnymede to Cromwell to the so-called Glorious Revolution to the American Revolution to Lincoln to Wilson to Roosevelt to Kennedy and beyond.

Of course, this Whig Theory of History is preposterous and fallacious and maintained only by a thoroughly dishonest editing of historical events. However, the leftists are correct in viewing Lincoln and the effect of his career on the course of the United States as moving America away from an aristocratic society founded upon traditions, authority and property and towards a mass democratic society founded upon universal suffrage, equality and unlimited government-mandated social experimentation. While it is not remarkable that leftists should admire Abraham Lincoln, it is noteworthy and surprising that the Lincoln Myth has been marketed to moderate and conservative Americans.

America's New Age after 1861

In the earlier era, I outlined swings both towards and away from decentralization. In this new era, most of the swinging went in only one direction towards ever more centralization. The efforts towards decentralization swing backs became very weak. To use a footbal analogy, they slowed down the enemy football team, but they never pushed beyond his 50 yard line and scored a touch down. Conservatism" in America has basically been a pathetic rear guard action, defined as basically whatever "Liberalism" was a generation or two ago.

One of America's problems is that it never had much of a real right wing to begin with. William Everdell observes in The End of Kings that virtually the entire right wing of the British political spectrum missing at the time of the American Revolution. In addition, Thomas Jefferson observed correctly that secessionism was the most potent weapon Americans had against tyranny. Once that got crushed, all the anchor lines to a serious, permanent right wing got severed.

To give a better idea of America's drift, Milton Friedman, in a 1987 Forbes interview, observed that virtually every item on the 1928 Socialist Plank has become a reality in America today. Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith observed in The Age of Uncertainty, that most students become unsettled the first time they read the Communist Manifesto and find out how many items have become true in America today.

Some good reading about America's drift towards centralization includes Pat Buchanan's A Republic, Not An Empire. Also, Dr. Tim Woods Not Politically Correct History of America.

In a way, the devil is in the details. As reviews the various historic episodes that have steadily expanded government, one sees a tale of a cancer steadily growing. One also sees a story of mental fracturing and massive self-deception. The recklessness and irresponsibility of one generation sets a bad precedent and gets taken for granted by the next generation, which then adds its own recklessness and irresponsibility.

In fact, one can make the analogy of the drug addict whose dependency increases to the point that he needs more "fix" to get by. Beyond a certain point, government growth and intervention becomes like a self-reinforcing drug addiciton. The following are some examples.

The people behind government growth justify it intellectually in the media and in schools. They begin to crowd out libertarian ideas. Once the libertarian voice gets drowned out beyond a certain point, the majority of people start to prefer authoritarian, big-government solutions because they have been conditioned to expect this. They readily accept statist solutions because they do not know any better.

Government growth creates a huge constituency of well-paid pork policians, bureaucrats, civilian contractors, corporate subsidy-recipients, and welfare dependents who now have a strong financial interest to perpetrate big government to maintain their livelihood. To them, when you cut government, you murder Santa Claus.

The groups that use the coercive power of government to gain privilege at the expense of fellow citizens become ever greedy for more privilege, power, and money. The weakness of the citizenry in yielding to the growth of government only becomes like blood in the water to these sharks

"Government" has its own "pornography" somewhat analogous to people who get addicted to erotic pornography as opposed to investing their time in developing real relationships. The "shamanism" and "machismo" of a chief executive starts to provide an emotional "turn on" for citizens. Monuments that glorify state accomplishments acquire magical significance. Scenes of massed troops and advanced military hardware can provide power orgasms typically associated with "militarism." Politicians can increasingly justify wars and other behavior that tends to grow government in terms of rhetorical abstractions that play to subconscious, magical thinking rather than clear, logical analysis. In addition, their rhetoric hides the special privileges accruing to a ruling gangster elite.

Also, as "statism" continually grew in America in the 20th century, there are dark and repeated undertones of "controlled opposition." Among other things, the increasingly authoritarian U.S. Government repeatedly proves itself incompetent at promoting decentralization through its own authoritarian, monopolotistic, bureaucratic methods. As an example, anti-Trust initiatives failed to block the creation of the privately owned Federal Reserve Banking System. It often had unintended consequences in terms of breaking up the worst trusts. In the 1930's the New Deal government "defends" workers by giving unions de facto authorization to engage in violence, and exemption from anti-trust legislation. In the 1960's and 1970's, FBI Cointelpro programs infiltrate rightist groups, and somehow "defend" white interests by getting agents provocateurs to discredit pro-white organizations as uncouth, inarticulate, violent slobs.

An important point I revisit below is that Aaron Russo's film "Freedom to Fascism" understates the seriousness of our situation when he states that America is headed towards fascism. Arguably, America has already been in a state of permanent fascism ever since FDR's New Deal. One can even argue that permanent fascism extends back to the creation of the Federal Reserve and income tax in 1913. However, the Federal government was still relatively small at the time of Woodrow Wilson although the fascist infrastructure had been put in place.

many members of FDR's administration openly admired Benito Mussolini in the early 1930's, as did leading Zionists such as Vladimir Jacobtinsky. As one indicator of the pro-Mussolini sentiment, U.S. Marine Corp General Smedley Butler got court martialed as a consequence of his criticism of Mussolini delivered before a social club gathering. He condemned Mussolini for arrogantly failing to stop his motorcade after it hit a child by stating that such matters were unworthy a head of state.

It would be more accurate to retitle Russo's film "From Fascism to Police State Terror."

Hence, as we follow the continual growth of American "statism" after 1861, we need to "keep our eye on the ball." We need to be watching for the continuing rise of "fascist indicators," such as how the Office of the President increasingly takes on overtones of the shamen, dictator, social meddler, warmongorer, or a papparazi cult of personality. We need to observe how Congress becomes increasingly divorced from real needs of constitutents and instead a rubber stamp of covert special interests. We need to see how checks and balances increasingly fail to prevent the rise of a legislating Supreme Court and an imperial President who can circumvent Congress in waging foreign wars. We need to see how Jacobin rhetoric increasingly squeezes out substantive talk about real issues. We need to see how government increasingly lies while habitually over promising and under delivering. We need to see the increasing hypocrisy between its brutal and monopolistic use of force and the fairness it demeans from others, such as through its highly selective application of affirmative action and "hate crime" laws. Lastly, we need to observe how various Ivy League academics and other court apologists and political prostitutes increasingly bend themselves into intellectual pretzels to defend the rise of the spendthrift, blank check pro-Zionist, neo-Jacobin, welfare-warfare global super state that wages perpetual war for perpetual peace.

To summarize, government increasing starts to work against the taxpayer to further its own interests rather than for the taxpayer. Government leaders increasingly resort to deceptions and coercive power to stay in power rather than providing genuinely productive governmental services to the citizenry.

I may disagree with Aaron Russo on how far advanced the statist disease has become, but no doubt we are solidly in agreement that it is not a pretty picture.

I will outline some major trends towards ever more centralization:

The War for Southern Independence: 1861-1865 U.S. Government waged aggressive war against a newly declared soverign, independent country with similar political institutions. Federal imperialists violently annexed the Confederate States of America after obliterating its government and destroying half its wealth.

Abraham Lincoln said that we must make the Constitution the new "political religion of the land." This was strange, considering that as a lawyer of all people he no doubt understand that the Contitution is fundamentally a social contract and not a moralistic religion. We have a clear separation between church and state. Furthermore, given the way he repeatedly ran roughshod over it, he was the last person in America who could urge fellow Americans to treat it like a religion. Regardless, Lincoln was good at telling people what they wanted to hear. Americans increasingly began to treat the Constitution like a religion. The U.S. Government as its high priesthood. Creating a sense of divine awe about government is very fascistic in nature.

1865-1876: Federal troops occupied Southern states. For many years in many states, Southern whites are not allowed to vote. Their legislatures are run by illiterate former slaves. They permit all-negro military units to go around and rape white women while supporting utterly corrupt carpetbagger regimes at the point of a bayonet. For example, South Carolina's reconstruction government was one of the most corrupt in American history (see Michael Collins Piper article about the Jewish governor Franlin J. Moses)

The fourteenth Amendment: more Federal intervention.

During Reconstruction era, whites could not vote in many states run by all black legislators.

1876 swing back: was Jim Crow, which prevented whites from being overwhelmed by blacks. Whites granted measure of local autonomy in return for aggreement to remain absorbed in the Federal Collective. This understanding is later violated in the 1950's and 1960's when Federal imperialists force racial integration at the point of a bayonet, such as Airborne troops herding white women into racially mixed schools.

In the late 1800's, the politics of envy and underlying class, ethnic, and regional warfare only grow in America. The whole Davy Crockett "Sockdolager" philosophy goes out the window, and many citizens could care less if they now the coercive power of governmetn to raid the pockets of other citizens. In other words, soft "civil war."

Feeling extreme resentment at being crushed by the North, Southern politics start to drift towards bringing home pork from northerners. Meanwhile in the north, we see the rise of big political machines in the cities, where citizens use the political system to hand out jobs and settle ethnic grudges. Some obvious examples are big Irish catholic political machines with some underlying eething animosity towards Anglos as a consequence of English oppression of Ireland and the centuries old Protestant-Catholic rivalry.

Pork-raider government adds fuel to the fire of big government growth, becaues now citizens start demanding that their politicans find ways to use government to come up with subsidy and wealth transfer programs.

William McKinley and the Spanish American war. This was America's first major war outside its borders since the invasion of Canada during the War of 1812. The explosion that sank the Battleship Maine in Havana Harbor was later determined by a naval board of inquiry to have likely been the result of an internal accident. Regardless, the conquest of Cuba as part of a Jacobin war of liberation also included a brutal occupation of the Philipines. For years, American soldiers killed hundreds of thousands of Filipinos until the islands were pacified.

The Spanish-American War was an important "test war." Having suckered Northern young men in a war of aggression against the South, now America's ruling elite needed to see how many of them would be willing to fight an imperial war overseas to annex and hold an alien, Spanish-speaking race. The elite also needed to how many members of a new generation of Southern young men would be pollyannish enough to fight alongside Northern men in their imperial war despite the horrible way they had mistreated the South.

Unfortunately the answer to both questions was that there were too many volunteers for a "Splendid Little War" and not enough mass resistance. Not in a new mass media era where newspaper barron William Randolph Hearst could brag to artist Frederick Remington: "You provide the pictures, and I will provide the war." Now the elite knew that all they needed was a flimsy neo-Jacobin ideological pretext, combined with a privately owned central bank to provide the rapid expansion of credit necessary to wage a major war, and they were ready to send American armies to fight anywhere in the world -- to include Europe.

The Filipino occupation was also ominonous for another reason. This episode created a civil service cadre that later manned the central planning bureacracy for World War I industries. Later on, the World War I Fed generation would in turn provide experienced cadre for New Deal central planning involving the entire U.S. economy.

As an introduction to WWI central planning-related corruption, read War Is A Racket by Marine Corps General Smedley Butler.

Counterswing: The American Anti-Imperialist League was formed in 1898 to assert classical liberal principles and oppose annexation. It was led by such notables as Mark Twain, Andrew Carnegie, and Grover Cleveland. It failed to prevent the Philipines and Puerto Rico from becoming U.S. territorities, and later failed to keep the U.S. out of World War I.

Teddy Roosevelt and invasion of Panama. Great White Fleet. No classical liberal, in his writings he hurled invective at Thomas Jefferson and excoriated rationalist thinker Tom Paine as a "dirty little atheist."

Teddy Roosevelt was the first showman to consciously, deliberately, and energetically define the U.S. Presidency as a cult of personality. With his "Bully Pulpit" public sermonizing style, he even gave it magical, shamanistic overtones. He made it a point to have press coverage of daily lifestyle events. "Uncle Ted" even publicly intervened in an American football atheletic dispute. "Cult of personality" is typically considered a "fascist" indicator.

After Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt was America's second major "Manchurian Candidate" president.

Also, we see the comic book legend driving the man. My opinion why George Custer was so reckless at Little Big Horn, he was trying to cultivate his comic book image as valient Indian fighter. He left behind his two gattling guns. He could have waited. Instead he pledged headlong into the entire Sioux and Cheyenne. There was no military necessity for him to attack headlong into the combined forces of the entire encamped Sioux and Cheyenne nation.

Even more sinister than the cult of personality, he was major culprit in American politics in terms of highjacking American icons in service anti-classical liberal, pro-liberal fascist.

Pioneers typically took law into own hyands as vigilantes and small groups. They did not put up with much crap. Lynch early Mormons and .

Interesting legend is the ambitious person creates the comic book pioneer legend about themselves, and the legend recreates them.

Born int hte log cabin goes back to Andrew Jackson. A contemporary of Jackson was Davy Crocket who toured Eastern Cities to embellish legend. Abraham Lincoln "born in a log cabin" and spoke with a high-pitched Kentucky accent.

Pioneer legend resonates around the world. A lot of ideologies and political movements find the idea of grass roots self-sufficiency very attractive. Soviet Union, the Soviets were soviets were self-sufficient peasant communities. Arab Bathaist talks about lower level self-sufficiency..

The big problem around the world is ideologists talk about these ideals, but the politcal reality always seems to degenerate back to some form of tyranny or brutal oligartchy. What makes the American experience so attractive, is that the pioneers not only talked the talk, but they walked the walk --and they prospered.

There is nothing wrong per se about someone wanting to live up to a legend. Crockett created a legend about himself, then later when his political career fell apart, headed to Texas to find a brave new future. I think at root Crockett was an honest, decent, well-intentioned man. I am not sneering at him. I think we need heroes. We need people who try to live to higher standard. Crockett sacrificed himself for a worthy cause and deserve. He certainly did not promote the exact opposite.

The rub comes with people who put on the trappings, and consciouisly and systematically work against the very people they pretend to serve. Furthermore, once there is evidence they are doing damage, they persist and do extraordinary damage to American interests.

Roosevelt's cult of personality also had a dark side. After Lincoln, he made a new stride in acting as a "Manchurian candidate" President.

Ideologically, Roosevelt pushing hard in the exact opposite direction from the classical liberal, Jacksonian democracy ideology of the pioneers.

Other Presidents had played the "pioneer legend" card to be sure.

No government, thrift, conservative social values, self-sufficiency, courage.

You knocked up a girl, you married her. If someone got off on jury and the community was convinced that he was guilty as hell, not uncommon for them to go ahead and just lynch you. Example, Leo Frank lynched in ____.

However, with Roosevelt he cultivated the pioneer and cowboy legends in a way that was qualitatively different, and vastly more sinister, than his predecessors.

The pioneers had "folk consciousness." Took care of each other. Self-sufficient. They both rugged individualists and self-sufficient communities. Those communities were attractive to people of many different ideological persuasions: anarchists, socialists, and extreme right wingers.

Roosevelt highjacked the cowboy and pioneer legend.

Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan were absolute disgraces. Most real cowboys back in Texas and California would probably want to shove them headfirst into a pile of horse manure, and that just getting started before.

Later on, Trilateral commission like to get a Southerner. Ronald Reagan -cowboy.

Classic highjackers, Richard Nixon, the anti-communist "gut figher" populist who went after Alger Hiss, who then opens up China. Or Lyndon Johnson who affected a plain Texas who did more damage to the South and white genetic interests than other President.

He became America's answer to Reichchancellor Otto Von Bismarck, who, incidentally, also served as an important role model for Adolf Hitler. Henceforward, Presidents who tried to act more "normal" by 19th century standards such as Warren Harding would be lambasted in media as "boring."

Progressivism: bribe the work force. Social Security... fascistic in nature.

Ideologically, FDR's racial nationalism really a slight of hand towards jingoism. At what point does pan-white racial nationalism become so diffuse that it becomes almost meaningless, and turn the U.S. Government into their father figure. Americans stripped of regional loyalty. FDR started to promote a "cartoony" jinogistic interpretation of patriotism.


T.R. was enigmatic in his racial views. On one level, T.R. was explictly pro-white and racially conscious. However, his pro-white racial nationalism was on a very abstract, pan-white level. You can see this in a tract popularly circulated among rightists in America today titled Roosevelt on Reds, Riots, and ___. He is also explicitly lauds the white race in his series The Winning of hte West.

Paradoxically, when it came to preserving the local flavorings of distinct European nationalisms in America, T.R.was openly hostile towards "hyphenated Americans.". I remember seeing a T.R. quote at an exhibit in the Smithsonian in Washington in which he stated with words to the effect that running Americans through the military was a good thing because it helped to level out "hyphenated" Americans.

Today we see the dark side back end of that policy, where white Americans are so "homogenized" that they lack the specific racial and ethnic identity, deep-seated motivation, and cohesion necessary to effectively stand up to the Jewish Lobby or halt massive illegal immigration from Mexico. With its below ZPG birth rate, white America is literally dying of a sociobiological analog of AIDs, where it simply lacks the immune defenses to guard against dynamic intruders.

Whether or not an Irish-American, Swedish-American, German-American, Italian-American, Celtic American, Nordic American or some other European American with an ancestral history going back tens of thousands of years wanted to give up an indigeneous identity was frankly none of T.R.'s intrusive business. His efforts to use the Federal government -- and in particular the military -- as a tool to suppress indigeneous white identities was in principle very Jacobin and fascistic. It was also very hypocritical, because T.R. certainly was not campaigning against Jewish Americans, who were at that time seizing control of America's central bank and its important media as a highly focused and cohesive ethnic group. In actuality, it required focused white ethnic groups, such as the very racially and ethnically homogeneous Puritan-descended New Englanders who started the American Revolution, to stand up to the Jews. When whites lack racial and ethnic pride, it is easy for Jews to buy off them off. With their claws on centrals, Jews definitely had plenty of money to selectively corrupt people. Despite all this, T.R.used the Presidency to aggrandize imperial power while undermining specific indigenous white identities.

The fact that Teddy Roosevelt denounced Thomas Jefferson and rationalist thinker Tom Paine in his writings is more evidence to me that he was at root an authoritarian, white supremacist, top down nationalist. One can intelligently argue the case that in terms of basic, abstract, underlying statist principles, Teddy Roosevelt had much more in common with Otto Von Bismarck and Adolf Hitler than Thomas Jefferson. Historicans remember him better today than Hitler because he did not publicly cross the Zionists or get America into a war where it got its rear end kicked.

T.R. was such a jingoist he is almost pathetic, just like George Custer was an idiot, a symptom of the deteriorating quality of America's leadership..


The Federal Reserve Act: Creation of central

Income tax

Entry into World War I

America's entry into World War I was a horror story for civil liberties. In many public libraries, books that seemed favorable to Germany were lifted off shelves and burned. One dissident was arrested and thrown in jail for reading the Declaration of Independence in a public place. It even got childish: Saurkraut was renamed "Liberty Cabbage."

Aron Russo, who has produced "Freedom to Fascim" is not quite correct. America has already had fascism many times over. I think it would be more accurate to title the documentary "from fascism to police state terror."

America had fascism under King Lincoln. It also had it in spades under Woodrow Wilson. However, after each of these regimes, there was a significant retreat back towards normalcy after the war was over, even if mostly on a rhetorical level..

Arguably, de facto fascism became a permanent fixture in America during Roosevelt's New Deal. The Old Right was snuffed out by decree not long after Huey Long was assasssinated, FDR prevented Rev Charles Coughlin from distributing Social Justice Magazine in the mail, and FDR dragged many leading members fothe America First Committee before the Great Sedition Show Trial.

Dr. Robert Higgs of the Independence Institute has written many excellent books such as Against Leviathan about the growth in size and arrogance of the Federal government during this period. All of his lectures at mises.org are well worth listening to.

We should note that there were many Old Right contemporaries of FDR such as John T. Flynn, Garret Garret, H.L. Mencken, Alfred Nock, Ralph Townsend, Elizabeth Dilling and Lawrence Dennis who recognized at the time that fascism had come to America during peacetime with the New Deal, and was here to stay.

Many of the aformentioned individuals were subtle about it, and certainly not as explicit as say, Garret Garret in his famous work The Revolution Was. Dennis was cagey about it by titling one of his works The Coming American Fascism. While Elizabeth Dilling did not explicitly call the U.S. Government "fascist," but she did write about the "Roosevelt Red Network" which says pretty much the same thing. Reading between the lines, most of the key surviving intellectual leaders of America's Old Right were signaling that fascism was already here.

As another horror story for civil liberties, tens of thousands of German and Italian Americans, along with 140,000 Japanese Americans, were placed in concentration camps in America.

On a philosophical level, once the public came to accept the mythology that government spending and war ended the Great Depression, the principles of fascism were embedded in their hearts and brains.

I do not pretend that the causes of the Great Depression are always simple. But if we are going to oversimplify, I like Dr. Murray Rothbard's Austrian economic approach in his work The Great Depression best of all. He felt that a key factor was the rapid expansion of money and credit by the Federal Reserve beginning with World War I and continuing through the 1920's, followed by a credit implosion. During the Depression, FDR's New Deal interventions artificially raised prices and prevented the economy from clearing out bad debt and price distortions. He also antagonized entrepreneurs by raising taxes. His interventionism ultimately prolonged and deepened the Depression. The free market was not allowed to effectively hold fire sales and readjust economic distortion, as it has done in only two years during a great recession during the Martin Van Buren administration when he stood back and let the free market operate. The Depression lasted through World War II, when wages were finally brought down to free market clearance levels by the end World War II when government wage and price controls prevented wages from rising, while government inflation dropped the real value of wages and inflation. Meanwhile, conscripting millions of Americans and having 400,000 of them get killed is a lousy way to correct economic imbalances.

Also, war generally does not create wealth. Studies show that R&D generally becomes cannabalized during war, and what R&D that exists is far less efficient. In Harry Hazlett's Economics In One Lesson, he points out in "The Fallacy of the Broken Window" that while war may benefit a few profiteers, its destructriveness inflicts opportunity costs and a loss of resources that could have been engaged in advancing production and wealth rather than makingup for losses.

War, as James Madison pointed out, generally favors bigger, more authoritarian government and suppression of civil liberties.

Therefore, to the extent that Americans had became conditioned to accept war and big govenrment spending, massive subsidy of indusry, and intervention as a cure for solving their economic ills, they have indeed become de facto fascists. They might vote in elections and keep a picture of Jefferson on the desk, but in underlying princple, they embrace fascism.

This was extremely dangerous


Woman's suffrage

Prohibition: Government decides it has the right to decide what you drink in the privacy of your own home.

Attempted entry into League of Nations

New Deal

FDR confiscates private ownership of gold

FDR denies mail privileges to Reverend Charles Coughlin
Great Show Trial of 1944.

FDR suicide. According to the Barnes Review, there is now strong evidence that FDR committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. He was probably depressed from realizing what a fool he had been to hand Eastern Europe over to Stalin. Or perhaps it was sinking in on him how his policy of unconditional surrender was costing the lives of many tens of millions of people (about 60 million people died in World War II). Aw shucks, the perils of "top down" leftist global management compared good old fashioned classical liberal noninterventionism.

Creation of United Nations
(Reducing four terms)

Bretton Woods

Rise of Keynesianism.

Creation of Israel

Integration of Armed Forces

Korean War: Significant growth in Presidential power. Undeclared war.

John F. Kennedy "jawboning" and "resource gap"

The New Industrial State by John Kenneth Galbraith

Civil Rights Act

Immigration Act

Great Society Program. The "War on Poverty" continues the fascist misonception that government spending and war are good things to end poverty.

Vietnam War. Another major undeclared war.

Assault on the Liberty Cover Up

London Gold Pool Cover up

Space program: Direct governemnt funding of science and technology, incredibly inefficient compared to ______; there is now even a question if some mission results were faked.

Nixon decouples from gold. Prior gold pool episode.

Hate crime legislation

The dawn of police state terror in America

Waco, Ruby Ridge

Derivatives up to 20 times American GDP
Congress votes another debt ceiling increase

Invasion of Iraq on phony pretexts of WMD for Israel. Probably the first war of completely naked foreign aggression in American history.

George Bush steals two elections.

War on Terror as a permanent War, once again, revisits Keynesian ideology that

Patriot Act

 

 

 

 

T
The biggest beneficiary of this suppression is the Jewish lobby that dragged America into the Iraqi fiasco, as documented in Michael Collins Piper's The High Priests of War and the recent Harvard Study. Americans are conditioned by their controlled national media to believe that any criticism of Jews, Israel, or Zionism is a form of "anti-Semitism." This in turn is a form of "racism." Therefore, Americans must never criticize any form of Jewish monopolization of national media. America must always give Israel all the money that it demands. Americans must always endlessly send their sons and daughters overseas to fight for Israel's interests. Americans can never point out that the Jewish right of return to Israel is based on bloodlines, which is very racist, and that Israel runs an anti-Palestinian apartheid state far more vicious and oppressive than anything ever seen in the old South Africa. To in any way protest all of this is of course "anti-Semitism," which of course is "racism," which of course is a great, effable moral evil, from the environmental top down ideological viewpoint.

A walk down left wing memory lane...

"Leftism" has a long history in America. According to William Everdell's The
In regard to leftist trends, shooting British soldiers during both the War of Independence and the War of 1812 did not exactly help the cause of White racial unity, particularly when it became part of a larger pattern that involved shooting white Southerners and Germans in the other big wars that came later. The fact that Protestant Anglo-Saxon America put itself at the financial mercy of Catholic France (which is co-equally Celtic, Alpine, and Mediterranean as well as "Nordic") during the American Revolution did not exactly clarify deep right wing roots in ancient English cultural, racial, ethnic, legal, and historical traditions.



I think that a good first step in our historical analysis involves simply documenting and taking note of all the major milestones in the growth of both "leftism" and "big government."

Another good step might be to find out what what the promises and expectations were at the time when each of these steps were taken. Have they in fact been fulfilled and betrayed?

Please recollect that George Washington once stated that the fundamental essence of government is force. Stated differently, government intervention is basically a form of "U.S. cavalry to the rescue."

For all the money spent, do you think many people are being "rescued" compared to what might have been accomplished if 75% of the money the government receives in taxes were instead retained by the private sector to help fund projects and jobs on a private level?

Similarly with the growth of leftism, have we really increased our capacity to "share" and achieve more "social justice" over the last one hundred years? Has government "sharing" done a better job than if the same resources had been allocated through private charities?

I might add that the "top down" viewpoint tends to look at everything in aggregates, as opposed to the "bottom up" viewpoint that I will get to later that looks at things on an individualized level. What people in our society benefit by shifting resource allocation to a centralized level where we lose the local American community focus?

As a third step, we might try to characterize the emerging symptoms of societies as they go deeper into the environmental top down perspective. This will help us develop a smell test to then look at other societies throughout history with similar characteristics to help us make better historical analogies and predict where we might be headed.

I would suggest the following symptoms that I see repeatedly mentioned in social science literature and political commentary:

a) Shamanism Other synonyms might be "guruism" (I made this up), "elitism," and "staff experts." This is the notion that people who affect all the trappings of serious intellectualism, such as accumulating large libraries, earning degrees from presitigious institutions, punching all the right career buttons, and who accumulate other "indicators" of brilliance, automatically have some very special, very arcane and esoteric sources of knowledge and special understanding that enable them to make decisions that are beyond question. The Shaman's credentials are so weighty that his views must be viewed with favor and his decisions must be obeyed even if they defy common sense and ordinary logical analysis.

There is also an emotional element involved here as well. The shaman must appear very mature and adult in his behavior. In the authoritarian state, the rest of us masses are the kiddies who require the mature leadership and erudite instruction of the Shamans so that we do not get out of hand.

Dr. Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Fed, was a perfect example of a shamanistic actor. If you read the archives of Congressman Ron Paul at mises.org, you will understand the frustration of trying to compare Greenspan's arcane, cryptic, and often self-contradictory Fed revelations with common sense, facts, and logic. Nevertheless, Dr. Greenspan remained very calm, reassuring, mature, and professorial in his behavior, even when he spoke total gibberish.

Incidentally, having earned a degree from a prestigious institution myself, I do not mean to cut my own throat. There are people with prestigious credentials who are in fact very capable and competent people. However, the credentials in and of themselves are only indicators. They prove nothing, particularly in regard to specific issues. Proof only comes from logical analysis applied to facts.

b) Statism This involves idolization of all the trappings and structures that go with the state apparatus, to include government buildings, layers of bureaucracy, government monuments, state symbols, command and control networks, and layers of regulations. The statist typically feels that since the state is such a good thing, that expanding the state gives us that much more of a good thing and an even bigger and more "comfy" security blanket.

With "statism," people tend to emotionally embrace the state as an end in itself, rather than keep a wary distance from a potential cancer. They are more concerned about structure and form than functionality and substance. They become oriented more towards duty-based morality systems to fit an authoritarian environment rather than contractual or utilitarian ethics used by equals. Last, but not least, all of the various things that are indirectly associated with "the state" acquire considerable prestige. In fact, they even acquire some super magical, quasi-religious, iconic characteristics of their own.

Let us examine some lessors saints that have been showered with pixie dust by the Holy Order of the U.S. Government. A chief holy relic is the U.S. Constitution which all members of the Armed Forces are sworn to protect and defend.

The U.S. Constitution is nothing more than a contract. Conceptually it is no different than a negotiated real estate leasing contract with a landlord, only it is much bigger in scope and deals with governance rather than realty issues. Contrary to popular impressions, it does not "give" citizens any rights. Rather, it describes what government cannot take away from them.

Many Founding Fathers were emphatic that Americans should remain unawed by this document. Thomas Jefferson wrote that he thought it woud be a good idea if Americans reinvented their Constitution each generation. In fact, there was a substantial group of Americans called anti-Federalists who thought the Constitution was a bad step towards centrism compared to the Articles of Confederation. They included Patrick Henry who boycotted the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia because "he smelled a rat." We can thank the anti-Federalists for demanding the Bill of Rights, otherwise I might not be able to write this article on the Internet today. I get into all of this into more detail, as well as some even more heretical material, in the libertarian racial nationalist section of this discussion. I explain the elements that make up viable "popular soverignty," and why any Constitution gets increasingly shaky as these elements slip out of your fingers.

The U.S. Constitution becomes a cop out when Americans view it as an icon that will magically run the country on auto-pilot while its citizens fall asleep monitoring underlying constitutional issues. As an example, we see greedy businessmen take the attitude that if they flood the U.S. with Mexicans to use as cheap labor, that all it takes is a short civics class on the Constitution and in order to make them just as "American" as folks who trace their ancestry back to the Mayflower. No doubt many Americans are also shocked at the Israel-first neo-conservatives such as Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz described in Mike Piper's High Priests of War who have also failed to show the salubrious effects of being sprinkled with U.S. Constitution pixie dust.

For all intents and purposes, fascism is simply a more explicit and aggressive form of statism in which government seeks to cartelize and manage major portions of private industry without getting rid of private industry altogether. Once we get rid of private industry and turn everything over to the state, we get communism. Facism can be either "left wing" or "right wing" depending on how it handles racial, class warfare, and private industry-related issues.

c) Neo-Jacobinism This is the concept that the state has an inherent moral authority to aggressively use its coercive power to enforce leftist ideology both at home and abroad. Some good examples might include when President Dwight Eisenhower sent in the 82nd Airborne to enforce racial integration in Alabama in the 1950's, when Napoleon conquored Austrian and German states in the early 1800's in the name of "liberty, fraternity, and equality," or when George Bush invaded Iraq in the name of "democracy."

A big problem with Jacobinism is that leftist ideology tends to be very maleable and open-ended to justify just about anything, since it has no real racial, ethnic, cultural, or heritage anchors. As an example, demogogues can exploit the term "democracy" alone to justify endless wars. The reason is that there is no such thing as a perfect democracy in any society. Therefore, one can always find some imperfection in the democracy of another country as a basis for aggression. Similarly, demogogues can use vague leftist terms such as "enemy of the people," "counterrevolutionary," or "racists" to wage perpetual war on domestic dissidents. (In regard to the term "racist," I argue in the environmental vs. genetics section that deep down inside everyone is instinctively a racist, therefore, anyone can become a target of the leftist state for wanting to defend some aspect of their race, ethnicity, culture, religion, heritage, or whatever).

d) Conspicuous Consumption This is the concept that the consumption of massive resources or the severe exercise of state power in and of itself proves the inherent legitimacy of the government's actions. Often this is accompanied by a very emotional feeling that the horrible things that the state does must have been the right thing or else God or destiny would not have allowed it to happen.

I have read of certain people in today's France who still feel that the Jacobin Terror of the French Revolution somehow "saved" France, as if mass killings of educated and refined people (to include many members of the middle class) and setting up France for the Napoleonic bloodbaths helped the country. Similarly, H.L. Mencken has correctly observed that Lincoln got his logic wires crossed in his Gettysberg address, when he spoke of "hallowed ground" to justify the terrible sacrifice of lives for his cause.

Conspicuous consumption is in some ways rational, and in other ways completely irrational. Let us start with the irrational.

In One Up On Wall Street, ace fund manager Peter Lynch points out that the most successful corporate CEO's typically run lean and mean companies. They have minimal frills and overhead and stay close to their markets and their production room floor. Huberth and Peters make the same point in In Search of Excellence. Similarly, in The Art of War, the famous Chinese strategist Sun Tzu points out that the the really skillful statesmen can anticipate the strategy of their adversaries, and accomplish their objectives without resorting to war. The least skillfill statesmen and generals blunder into head-on situations where lots of people get killed.

In contrast to all of this, we see CEO's of major corporations in America pile it on with more hefty salaries, severance packages, and perks such as stretch limousines and executive jets. Similarly, a Mises Institute lecturer has commented how liberal historians usually rate as the greatest President of America the ones who got American embroiled in the bloodiest, most expensive wars, and they simultaneously ignore the ones who avoided wars and cut government spending. Hence, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, and FDR were the greatest, while relatively frugal noninterventionist Presidents such as Martin Van Buren and Thomas Jefferson are nonentities.

However, while it is extremely inefficient in terms of a productive use of resources, one can argue that conspicuous consumption can be very effective in terms of sending certain social signals. One of the most basic signals is a fear message. It has "demonstration" characteristics similar to a terroristic act where one blows up innocent civilians and government property to show potency in retaliating against political enemies, only here one simply wastes resources to make the demonstration without doing anything illegal.

As a primitive example, in ancient Polynesia, the particular chieftain who could order a thousand human sacrifices along with two thousand bananas and coconuts on his heiau (temple) was probably more likely to strictly enforce the kapus and send an agent called a Mu to choke violators in their sleep than a smaller chieftain who could order only ten human sacrifices with fewer coconuts and bananas at a whack. Therefore, people who could read and react to the conspicuous consumption signals involving religious sacrifice might tighten up their act to enhance their chances of survival.

A CEO who can score the big severance package and the executive jet may be in a better position to engate in legal terrorism against his adversaries that someone of more modest means and tastes. Perhaps in contemporary America their bark is worse than their real bite, but still on a very primitive, subconscious level, we feel their "heavy mana," as they used to say in Old Hawaii.

Similarly, a President who is powerful enough to waste thousands of American lives in a needless foreign intervention and hundreds of billions of dollars might also be powerful enough to send FBI agents, IRS auditors, and other dark forces after you to harass you and make your life miserable if you look cross-eyed at him.

In reality, the bark of an aggressive President may be much bigger than his effective bite for U.S. citizens on U.S. territory, or at least for the time being (all bets are off overseas, in view of the use of depleted uranium, torture, and other nasty portents), but still on a subconscious level we sense the bullying and intimidation factor against our First Amendment rights.

e) Whig Theory of History This is the idea that every time something goes wrong in American history, Americans will take note of it and then analyze it. We then move on and profit byall of our hard-earned experience. Therefore, the America that we see today can only be the net repository of a rich accumulation of "learning experiences" and hence must be a much better society than it was fifty years ago, and that society must in turn be better than the one that came fifty years earlier, and so on.

Later I provide another viewpoint on the Whig Theory with my extracts from Sam Dickson's brilliant article "Shattering the Icon of Abraham Lincoln." When you read his comments, as well as my cyclical, genetic-related viewpoints on history, you may better appreciate the Whig Theory for the scam that really it is.

Disturbing anomalies

It would require a whole library of ebooks to address all of these issues in adequate depth --which is incidentally why I hope to keep adding more ebooks over time. However, I would like to provide some anomalous examples.

In regard to the contention that Federal invasion of the South was required to end slavery, Dr. Jeffry Hummelt, in Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men observes that the living standards of the average Southern Negro were lower forty years after the Civil War was over than at the time the war began. The war destroyed half the South's wealth, and by the turn of the century the South had still not fully recovered. Furthermore, the U.S. was the only industrialized country of its era that was incapable of ending slavery peacefully.

Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo's observes in The Real Lincoln that Abraham Lincoln's first priority involved enforcing high tarrifs legislated just prior to Southern secession. Higher tariffs paid off his political backers. In an effort to prevent secession, he offered the South the original Thirteenth Amendment proposal, which he supported. This guaranteed slavery in the South. Lincoln was clear that the first priority of his threat of armed invasion was to collect the new tariff.

So why do the marble inscriptions at the Lincoln Memorial, or for that matter on plaques at hundreds of namesake high schools around the country, fail to explicitly honor "The Great Tariff Collector?" Even Karl Marx admitted at the time that it was first and foremost a tariff war and not a war to end slavery. Why are our historians less honest than the father of modern communism?

In regard to the contention tht the Federal Reserve Banking System serves a useful purpose, let us observe that by 1913, the year of its creation, the U.S. dollar had gained 50% in value over the prior 100 years. During this period, the dollar was linked to gold most of the time. The Fed was ostensibly created to help stabilize the currency and prevent severe business recessions. Instead, the dollar has lost well over 95% of its value, we have been hit with both the Great Depression and the 1970's stagflationary recession. Both of these events dwarfed anything known in the 19th century. We are probably en route to an inflationary blow out under "helicopter money" Ben Bernanke. The Fed has never been fully audited, is privately owned, and can create money independently of Congress. The ability to inflate the currency is an indirect form of taxation.

If the U.S. Government exists to serve our interests, why is it so apathetic regarding these issues? Congressman Ron Paul keeps raising them over and over again. There are a number of excellent books such as The Creature from Jekyll Island by Edwin Griffin or The Federal Reserve Conspiracy by Eustace Mullins that provide shocking details. Why is not anyone taking effective action?

In regard to describing American foreign policy in the 20th century, "enigmatic" is too polite a term. As an example, Woodrow Wilson ran on a peace plank in 1916, bragging that he kept America out of World War I. Immediately after he got elected, he did a complete flip-flop, and got America involved in a "War to End All War" and "A War to Make the World Safe for Democracy." America's intervention prolonged the war in Europe for nearly two years and cost millions more lives and drove many countries to total exhaustion. Wilson flip-flopped on his peace objectives and agreed to the onerous peace terms of the Versailles Treaty. Then, contrary to his alleged mission to promote democracy, he promoted a "hand's off" policy towards the Bolsheviks during the ensuing Russian civil war. All of this fueled the growth of bolshevism, which in turn encouraged the rise of fascism and Nazism and ultimately the onslaught of World War II.

It is bad enough that America would scrap its 19th century policy of avoiding foreign entanglements. Why would America convert a European War into a World War in a way that sets the stage for our involvement in a second World War?

On an ideological level, America has also undergone some interesting pretzel twists in the 20th century. Columnist Joseph Sobran has noted that today so called "modern" liberals and "modern" conservatives are both nearly the opposite of what "classical liberals" and "classical conservatives" once were in the 19th century. So, for example, both classical liberals and classical conservatives in America once believed in the early 1800's that white racial survival was non-negotiable, the American republic must be kept highly restrained under the Constitution, that America had no business using its military to impose "democracy" overseas, and that government had no business managing the economy. Today, both modern liberals and modern conservatives denounce racially conscious whites as "racists" while retaining blind allegiance to the exclusively Jewish state of Israel, believe that the Constitution is an anachronistic document, encourage more government spending to bail out economic problems, and laud American military intervention to impose "democracy" overseas.

One political pundit observed that "conservatism" in America today usually means "yesterday's liberalism." As an example, in the 1960's, liberals demanded that Americans not discriminate against Blacks as individuals, whereas the Ku Klux Klan favored racial segregation. Today Klan organizations claim they do not want to discriminate against blacks as individuals, whereas liberals often promote interracial marriage and wide open borders. We might ask why do we see this consistently relentless drive towards leftism and internationalism in American history?

We may ask why what we call "history" has in fact become a form of religion? Georgia Lawyer Sam Dickson points out in his work "Shattering the Icon of Abraham Lincoln," that what is popularly accepted as the "Whig Theory of History" is in reality a secular mythology. Dickson explained:

Flag carried by the 3rd Maryland Regiment at the Battle of Cowpens, S. Carolina, 1781

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