This article was originally published by George Ford Smith at The Mises Institute.
“He [President McKinley] portrayed American expansion in the Pacific as a continuation of manifest destiny. He compared the Filipinos to Native Americans, calling them savage warriors or ‘little brown brothers.’ Appealing to popular attitudes of the times, he encouraged Americans to fulfill their manly duty to spread Christian civilization. The United States, he asserted, was a liberator, not a conqueror.”—Susan A. Brewer, “Selling Empire: American Propaganda And War In The Philippines”
“Then onward, Christian soldier! Through field of crimson gore,
Behold the trade advantages beyond the open door!
The profits on our ledgers outweigh the heathen loss;
Set thou the glorious stars and stripes above the ancient cross!”—William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., ibid.
(Note: Spreading Christianity to a nation already largely Catholic ended with some 200,000 civilian Filipinos dead).
One of the suggestions Albert Jay Nock made in his 1939 essay, “The Criminality of the State,” was to view brutal actions by the world’s states as typical of their behavior, especially among the strongest ones. Why be shocked, for example, by
. . .the barbarous behavior of the German State towards some of its own citizens; the merciless despotism of the Soviet Russian State; the ruthless imperialism of the Italian State . . .?
His response to people surprised by such barbarity was to ask, “What would you expect? Look at the record!”
The State’s criminality is nothing new and nothing to be wondered at. It began when the first predatory group of men clustered together and formed the State, and it will continue as long as the State exists in the world, because the State is fundamentally an anti-social institution, fundamentally criminal.
Nock was persuaded by Franz Oppenheimer’s theory that people acquire wealth in one of two ways: either through work and exchange or theft. The first, Oppenheimer called the economic means, the second, the political means. States are the manifestation of the political means, the embodiment of a predatory class that coercively feeds off and controls its productive captives.
Within the American state the occupants change periodically, and many people believe the troubles we’re experiencing are due to voting the wrong people into office. Better people would produce better government.
There are several shortcomings to this idea. For one, the American state’s growth over its history has been steady, beginning with the ratification of the US Constitution in 1789. In Our Enemy, the State, Nock wrote that, under the Articles, many—northerners especially—thought the distribution of power between government and the people was unsatisfactory, and “when the redistribution took place in 1789, it was effected with great difficulty and only through a coup d’État . . .”
The American party system is another reason “better people” don’t make it into office. A pro-freedom candidate such as Ron Paul—especially because he called for auditing and then abolishing the Federal Reserve, the state’s legal counterfeiter—found himself largely excluded from the levers of power. Party leaders, mega-donors, AIPAC and other PACs, along with a politically-controlled media combine to keep candidates who threaten the state’s power off the ballot—or if they slip through, to see that they’re removed.
It’s a process as old as states themselves. In President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address of January 20, 1961 he announced to the world,
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
This much we pledge–and more.
The key phrase was “liberty” instead of McKinley’s “Christian civilization,” but it worked just as well because it promised more power and revenue for the state through the instrument of war. But later, in a commencement speech on June 10, 1963—disturbed by such CIA skullduggery as Operations Northwoods—Kennedy told American University graduates:
Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable–that mankind is doomed–that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.
After JFK’s assassination in November, Lyndon Johnson quickly expanded the war in Vietnam, and the result was a dramatic escalation of state power that eventually included the government’s refusal to redeem foreign-held dollars for gold, what journalists called Nixon Shock—“a new prosperity without war,” the president announced with a straight face.
Kennedy’s phrase “gripped by forces we cannot control” still looms today as Congress refuses to exercise its war powers. The state tolerates no threats to its power. With war, social power all but disappears, as was tragically exemplified in the First World War. Leftist historian Howard Zinn narrates:
Senator James Wadsworth of New York suggested compulsory military training for all males . . . ”We must let our young men know that they owe some responsibility to this country.”
The supreme fulfillment of that responsibility was taking place in Europe. Ten million were to die on the battlefield; 20 million were to die of hunger and disease related to the war. And no one since that day has been able to show that the war brought any gain for humanity that would be worth one human life.
As I wrote in an earlier essay,
Even with Britain imposing a starvation blockade against Germany that eventually killed 750,000 German civilians, the Allies were in danger of losing the war. Using a fleet of newly developed submarines, Germany was destroying Allied shipping at the rate of 300,000 tons per week. By war’s end the U-boats had sunk over 5,700 ships. In early 1917, the Allies were facing the prospect of asking Germany for peace terms.
For Wall Street [and the Morgan empire], peace was not an option. With the possibility of Allied bonds going into default, investors would incur a loss amounting to $1.5 billion. Commissions, as well as the profits from selling war materials, would be lost. The Treasury could make direct grants to the Allies, but only if the US abandoned its “neutrality” and entered the war. Following Wilson’s address to Congress, it did so officially on April 6, 1917.
The Morgan cash flow was thus saved.
And the state killed over 100,000 American men to save it, prompting marine Major General Smedley D. Butler—two-time Medal of Honor recipient—to publish War is a Racket, ironically in the same year Nock’s Our Enemy, the State first appeared, 1935. Though libertarian classics, both books are mostly unknown to the general public. No surprise there.
Today, no one knows what’s really going on with Iran because of the usual MSN-controlled coverage and AI fake videos. We do know that people, including children, are being killed, humanitarian crises are spreading, economies are taking a hit, and, at this point, only if President Trump changes his mind will the war stop.
Conclusion
As I wrote in Do Not Consent, “All states today are on the road to economic collapse [if they’re not obliterated by war first], motivating a search for better ways of organizing society.” Clearly, if we are to have lasting peace, prosperity, and a future we will have to organize under the voluntary institutions of the free market. It will necessarily be a government without the state. As Thomas Paine recommended in Rights of Man Part the First:
Man is not the enemy of man, but through the medium of a false system of Government. Instead, therefore, of exclaiming against the ambition of Kings, the exclamation should be directed against the principle of such Governments; and instead of seeking to reform the individual, the wisdom of a Nation should apply itself to reform the system. (emphasis added)
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