Our story begins in 1844 when the Free Will Baptists came together to create their first institution of higher learning. Unlike their more numerous brethren in the South, this group of Baptists were anti-slavery and pro-education for everyone, so blacks and women were admitted to their college from the very first year. After several moves and name changes this school became known as Hillsdale College in Hillsdale Michigan, about halfway between Detroit and Chicago.
Hillsdale College now is known
for their classical liberal arts education in the Christian tradition offered
to every student. In fact, Hillsdale’s two-year core curriculum is mandatory
for all students regardless of major. Another highlight of Hillsdale is their
no cost no credit courses offered to anyone. I am currently a student in this category
filling in the gaps of my professional education with liberal arts course
gaining knowledge for its own sake.
The course in which I am
currently enrolled is The Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic. The other day on
one of the course videos the professor stated that the Roman Republic lasted
about 500 years and the Roman Empire, its successor, lasted slightly less than
500 years. That fact motivated my thoughts in several directions. The Baptists
I hang with have repeatedly compared the United States with Rome (almost always
with the Empire, not the Republic) and that empires usually do not last long. The
United States will soon be 246 years old, and so as many of my Baptist friends
would say, may soon collapse.
Then I began to think about if
the United States had a similar experience as Rome when the Republic became an
Empire. The Roman conversion is not precise, but it begins when the Romans
conquered the entire Italian peninsula and began their foreign adventures.
Their presence in Sicily initiated the first of three wars with Carthage, an
empire based in North Africa and Spain. So, did the United States undergo a
similar conversion from republic to empire? Yes, we did. And, like Rome, the date
of change is not precise, And, again like Rome, our change began with our
manifest destiny motivating our ancestors to move from sea to shining sea, from
the Atlantic to the Pacific. But first, a little background.
When our Founders assembled in
Philadelphia in 1787 to jettison the Articles of Confederation by writing a new
constitution they looked to the ancient Greek city-states and the Roman
Republic (not the Empire) for guidance. From Sparta the Founders saw a city-state
with checks and balances in government, but also too much martial spirit for
their liking. From Athens they learned about the spirit of democracy, but also
its excesses. And from the 150 or so, Greek city-states as a whole they learned
about the need for unity, not just to resist invasions like from Persia, but also
in more peaceful times.
When the Founders looked to
the Roman Republic, they liked the republican virtues that sustained the Romans
but also they examined the Romans’ mixed constitution of power granted to the kingship,
aristocracy, and common people. Using lessons they learned from the Greeks and
Romans, and also from the Swiss Confederation, our Founders created a
constitution of federal union not only for 13 states hugging the Atlantic coast
of North America but also for a
continental union expanding westward.
While the Founders could
envision our constitutional republic (not a democracy) spreading towards the
Pacific, they did not see our republic gaining territory beyond either
coastline to become a colonial empire like Rome or Britain. And like Rome this
thirst for colonies would doom the American republican experience as we morphed
into an American Empire.
To be clear, a constitutional
republic is a republic governed through a written constitution designed for a
nation reaching its natural borders. An empire, at least for us Americans, is
our republic for whatever reasons extending ourselves beyond our natural
borders to possess other lands as colonies, possessions, and territories.
Because the Founders designed our constitution for the government’s powers to
be limited in scope, an emerging American empire required enlarged government
with increasing powers.
Our constitutional republic
reached its zenith in the 1820s with the Monroe Administration. The Monroe
Doctrine gave notice to European powers to stop their interference with the American
nations south of the United States and with the statement by Secretary of State
(later president) John Quincy Adams that the United States does not go abroad
in search of monsters to destroy, Americans continue to focus on the internal
development of the republic, (By the way the staff of the State Department under
Adams consisted of six clerks and two messengers,)
But the first crack in our
constitutional republicism appeared two decades later. In 1846, the United
States provoked a war with Mexico over our annexation of Texas, invaded Mexico
capturing its capital city, and had half of Mexico ceded to it through a treaty.
This war was opposed in principle by two future presidents- Illinois
congressman Abraham Lincoln and Army lieutenant U.S. Grant.
From May 1 to October 30,
1893, Chicago hosted the World’s Columbian Exposition, also known as the
Chicago World’s Fair. The American Historical Society chose to meet in Chicago
during the fair and one of its presenters was a young professor of history form
the University of Wisconsin named Frederick Jackson Turner, Dr, Turner read to
the assembled scholars his academic paper entitled “The Significance of the Frontier
in American History” which ignited Turner’s frontier thesis. Turner announced
to the assembly that for all practical purposes the frontier no longer existed
for the United States.
I have the year 1893 as the
death of the American Republic. Nevertheless, like the Romans, this was a
process preceded by certain events which propelled the United States into an
American Empire. The process could be said to have begun in 1886 with the
capture of Geronimo, an Apache medicine man and freedom fighter, by the US Army
which led to peace in the Southwest. Beginning in1889, the unorganized lands in
Oklahoma were opened to white settlement with a series of land runs. In 1890,
the last major battle of the American Indian Wars occurred at Wounded Knee in
South Dakota in which the US Army killed nearly 300 Lakota men, women, and
children, and in which ironically 20 Medals of Honor were awarded to the soldiers.
And finally, earlier in 1890, a book written by naval officer and Naval War
College professor Alfred Thayer Mahan entitled The Influence of Sea Power
upon History, 1660-1783. This book was a major success which propelled the
United States and other world powers to view sea power as the major way of
expansion, a way of protection, or both.
Events following Turner’s pronouncement
in Chicago demonstrated a strong coming imperial streak in the American
mindset. In 1894, the US Army was sent to Chicago to help end the Pullman
Strike by organized labor. The precedent was now set for military intervention to
quell domestic disputes instead of patrolling the now non-existent frontier for
marauding Native Americans.
Then, in 1897, President
McKinley appointed New York City Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt as
Assistant Secretary of the Navy. Roosevelt was an activist and used his power
behind the scenes to place the US Navy on a war footing. Early in 1898, the US
continued its intervention in the Spanish colony of Cuba by dispatching the USS
Maine to Havana Harbor to “protect” American interests in that place. When the Maine
blew up in February, the American press seized upon the idea that Spain was responsible
for the catastrophe and used public opinion to pressure Congress to declare
what future Secretary of State John Hay called a “splendid little war.”
The war went generally well
for the US starting with the US Navy's big victory over the Spanish fleet in Manila
Bay in the far-off Philippines. Roosevelt was just as responsible for the feat
as was Admiral Dewey. But now TR was in Cuba with the “Rough Riders” of the 1st
Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. After losing Cuba to the Americans, Spain sued for
peace.
More US soldiers died from
disease than from Spanish bullets but that did not stop our government from acquiring
tropical Puerto Rico and the Philippines as well as Guam from Spain. Hawaii was
annexed and The American Empire was now fully born. And
the war was good for TR. In three years he entered the White House and became
our first modern president.
Modernity in America in the
early 1900s meant overseas expansion was the new frontier. The Philippine-American
War, fought right after the Spanish-American War, was a brutal and bloody
conflict on both sides. US soldiers and marines used waterboarding, internment
camps, and in some instances, mass executions in attempts to :civilize” the
Filipinos to prepare them for eventual independence (which indeed came on July
4, 1946). When Federal Judge William H. Taft, future president and chief
justice, was appointed civil governor, the US military became less aggressive
overall.
It was indeed an anti-imperialism
streak in the United States at the time which used bad news from the
Philippines as evidence we should not be involved in foreign entanglements as President
Washington had advised in his Farewell Address in 1797. Samuel L. Clemens (aka
Mark Twain) was one of the leaders of this movement and he poignantly pointed
out the hypocrisy of praying for the safety and well-being of one’s own soldier
son while ignoring the mother whose son was on the other side of the conflict. Nevertheless,
this movement was just as rife with racism as was the imperialists.
TR continued on. He intervened
in the Colombia/Panama dispute. With the navy and marines showing just enough
US support, Panama became independent of Colombia and granted the US rights to
construct the Panama Canal in one of the major engineering and management feats
of our time. TR also promoted construction of the US Navy’s “Great White Fleet”
and then ordered it on a global cruise to demonstrate American sea power. And TR
personally injected himself in the Russo-Japanese War to get both Russia and Japan
to begin peace talks; of course, TR was the chief negotiator of the peace
talks.
The American Empire ripen some
more with Woodrow Wilson as president. Not only was Wilson a racist, he was a
interventionalist in Mexico and some other Latin American states. And after his
leadership in getting the US to get involved needlessly into World War I, Wilson
led the efforts to violate free speech rights of millions of Americans. Our government deemed any criticism of the war
effort as unpatriotic and perhaps even treasonous.
Franklin Roosevelt strengthened
the American Empire with his New Deal agencies and with foreign affairs. Early in
1941, FDR ordered the US Pacific Fleet from its base in San Diego California to
its new base at Pearl Harbor Hawaii. An unintended consequence of this action
was that Japan found it could easier initiate a surprise attack against an
American territory in the middle of the Pacific Ocean than against the continental
United States. During the war Japanese Americans and African Americans were
distinguishing themselves fighting the Nazi war machine, their families at home
suffered in internment camps and under racist Jim Crow laws, respectively.
After the war, President Truman
authorized the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The problem
with the CIA is not its mixed record of successes and failures, but that it is
hardly “central” at all. In addition to the CIA 16 other top-secret
intelligence agencies fall under the umbrella of the Director of National
Intelligence, a post created after 9/11 to coordinate these agencies which
often conduct warrantless searches of phone calls by American citizens as well
as other unconstitutional actions. They are aided by the secret Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court, which violates the Constitution as
does the Patriot Act, passed after 9/11.
Also, after the war, there appeared,
at least in public, a new social class whom I call the Guardian Class, members
of which are akin to Plato’s philosopher-kings who are destined to rule other Americans
for their benefit as they perceive that benefit to be. Guardians are usually career
politicians and civil servants who attend the “right” schools (Ivy League and similar
colleges), gain the “right” mentors, and marry the “right” spouses. Guardians span the partisan divide as,
for example, the Democrats have the Kennedys and the Republicans have the
Bushes.
Walter Isaacson and Evan
Thomas in their The Wise Men offer biographies of six prominent Guardians
interspersed with public events and how these men help shape those events for
the post-World War II generations. David Halberstam in The Best and the
Brightest chronicles how Guardians in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations
got the United States deeply involved in Vietnam.
Not all our modern presidents
have been Guardians. From 1961 onward I count only Kennedy, Ford, Bush 41, Bush
43, and Obama in that class. If a president is not a Guardian, he (and the
future she) will be surrounded by advisers who will be primarily Guardians.
Congress passed the National
Security Act of 1947 and amended in 1949 which created the National Security Council
(NSC). The NSC is composed of pertinent cabinet officers and presidential advisors,
and is chaired by the president, and serves as the president’s principal forum
for national security and foreign policy decision making. On paper the NSC as
originally intended looks good but the NSC as it developed throughout the years
raises red flags for republican principles of governance.
First, the role of the
Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs or National Security
Advisor (NSA) has been enlarged and strengthened. Rather than being an “honest
broker” for differing perspectives of council members the NSA has received
power far more than warranted and in some cases the NSA’a power and prestige
ellipces that of the secretaries of state and defense.
Second, the NSC staff has grown
both in size and in power throughout the years. Currently, under the Biden
Administration, the NSC staff has at a minimum about 141 members working issues
such as technology, cyber policy, gender policy, strategic planning, partnerships,
global engagement, global health, specific global regions, human rights,
southern border, economics, labor, energy, climate change, counterterrorism, and
arms control. Thus, the NSC has become a combination of mini redundant departments
of state, defense, homeland security, and other federal agencies. As the
American Empire grows so does its byzantine governance.
In the early Roman Republic
only citizens could serve in the army. To be a citizen meant that a man had
some degree of wealth to own property such as a farm or villa. To be an ideal citizen
meant that a man was a farmer, a soldier, and was involved in civic
responsibilities. Later the Romans needed more military manpower so they
abolished the citizenship requirement for army service. While this action
created a more professional army, soldiers became less identified with
republican virtue of service.
The US ended its active
selective system draft in 1973. As the number of veterans of our military
branches- Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Space Force- shrink
each year I now believe every adult needs to serve in some capacity, whether it
is community service, national service, or military service. And some benefit
should be attached to service- perhaps the right to vote or even citizenship
itself.
Afghanistan was the staging
area for the Al-Qaeda attacks against the United States on 9/11 in 2001. Small
teams of US special forces and CIA operatives were quickly dispatched to that
country. They joined with the Northern Alliance opposition and toppled the
Taliban government which had given refuge to Al-Qaeda and its leader Osama ben
Laden (OBL), the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.
OBL and his followers
retreated to the Tora Bora Mountains along the border with Pakistan. Delta
Force Major Thomas Greer (aka Dalton Fury) was given a small task team of US
and UK commandos and ordered to find and kill OBL. According to Greer’s
accounts he was denied reinforcements as his team began to close in on OBL so
as to not offend our Afghan “allies.” As a result, OBL was able to escape to
Pakistan. He was not killed until several years later by US Navy Seals in the
Zero-Dark-Thirty mission.
Once the first mission to kill
OBL failed, the US decided to “nation-build” and so we spent thousands of
American and Afghan lives and billions of dollars in our longest war ever. Our
imperial intentions were honorable but unrealistic. Planning our exit was
inevitable and would be difficult but the way it was finally conducted was
unimaginably sloppy to the point of being criminally negligent.
In 2003 came the disasterous decision
to invade Iraq. The search for “weapons of mass destruction” quickly became the
false ridden “weapons of mass delusion.” The initial military campaign and occupation
by US and UK imperial forces went well enough but too soon our soldiers,
sailors, and marines were drawn into a counterinsurgency for which we were ill
prepared by having no clear military doctrine from which to draw upon.
Our Guardians and military leaders
were again negligent for failure of readiness to win the hearts and minds of everyday
Iraqis. To totally disarming and dismissing the Iraqi army left many former
soldiers without jobs and only too ready to fight the invading infidels and
banning all Baathists from the government eliminated skilled technicians from
key positions in providing electricity, water, and other services to the people.
Imperial Proconsul Paul Bremmer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority,
has never been called to explain himself for these decisions.
Only after a counterinsurgency
doctrine was in place, new commanders named, and a surge of additional forces
ordered was the Iraqi situation stabilized. Yet years of fighting and dying
with no objectives clear to average (Artisan and Middle Class) Americans who
were sending their sons and daughters to do the fighting and dying, the US was
ready to “get out of Dodge” when the opportunities presented themselves. Now Iraq
is more prone to agree with neighboring Iran than with Western interests.
The teaching of virtues
through civics and citizenship lessons have faded in our public schools despite
the fact our Founders considered virtuous citizens essential for our American
Experiment. They pulled their ideals of virtues from the Roman Republic which
had an integrated core of virtues as follows:
·
Acting in good faith; reliability,
gratefulness, loyalty,
·
Selfless: generous, simplicity, incorruptible,
charitable
·
Justice: order, fairness, responsible, empathy
·
Resolute: endurance, perseverance, courage
·
Duty: respectful. Industrious, dedicated
·
Purity: sense of morality, health, dignity,
truthful
·
Self-Control: restraint, modest, merciful,
gravity, economical
·
Honorable: moral actions, pride, reputation,
humanity
However, the Founders did not
put the early Romans up on a pedestal. They understood that their actions were
not always realized in light of their ideals. Perhaps one might a modesire tore contemporary version of
virtues from, for example, the old Boy Scout Law:
·
Trustworthy
·
Loyal
·
Helpful
·
Friendly
·
Courteous
·
Kind
·
Obedient
·
Cheerful
·
Thrifty
·
Brave
·
Clean
·
Reverent
Whatever system of virtues is
used, the virtues must be taught at home. at school, and during religious
instruction with all intentionality at age-appropriate levels for virtuous
citizens.
Rather than continue with a
litany of complaints, I trust the discerning reader senses the direction of our
beloved nation. Perhaps one day the American Empire will cease and when that
happens perhaps we will turn again to limited government with separation of
powers, checks and balances, and natural rights for all sustained, promoted,
and activated by a virtuous citizenry.
We hold these truths to
be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are
Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these
rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed.
(from the Declaration of
Independence)
The powers not delegated
to the United States by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to
the States,
are reserved to the States
respectively,
or to the people.
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