CLASSIC ESSAYS: “Dictatress of the world”: A prophetic 200-year old warning is ignored to our peril

Draft of the Declaration of Independence presented to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia on June 28, 1776. (painting by John Trumbull, 1819)

 

Until the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the Western world was a grim place. Power was concentrated in the hands of a small group of megalomaniacs who never had enough wealth and power. They exploited their own people and often waged war against neighbors in order to acquire even more power and wealth.

Indeed, by far the most fundamental problem that the American Founding Fathers faced was how to prevent a group of people from concentrating power in its hands and establishing a dictatorship.

Building a radically new form of government is precisely why we speak of the American Revolution and not merely the War of Independence. The true revolution is found in American political philosophy.

While the first shots in the anti-colonial war against Great Britain were fired in 1775, the U.S. political system today was only established and ratified in summer 1787 at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.

The Founding Fathers devised an ingenious solution to mitigate the inherently dangerous and corrupt nature of state power. At the Constitutional Convention they unveiled the concept of the separation of powers: Vital state responsibilities are divided among competing branches of government. Each checks the power of the others, making a dictatorship very difficult to engineer.

In addition, power was further divided by a federal system, whereby each state had the authority to rule in its jurisdiction according to the will of the local population. This brilliant system suited the young United States, which in 1787 stretched almost 1,500 miles along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, from frigid Maine to subtropical Georgia.

Yes, this system was imperfect — the Constitution didn’t emancipate the enslaved (though most northern states soon did); it didn’t protect indigenous peoples; and it didn’t protect millions of exploited immigrants.

Truly it’s a fearful thing to fall into the hands of Man, the most dangerous predator on Earth. The Founding Fathers understood this loathsome fact about human nature. So their goal was to build a new Republic that would restrain state power and offer people some protection, even in an imperfect system with severe growing pains (and which exploded into civil war in 1861).

John Quincy Adams at home in Massachusetts; photo 1843, by Philip Haas

As far as foreign policy and U.S. power abroad, John Quincy Adams best expressed the general sentiment of the early Republic. Well aware that his rapidly expanding country would soon become a world power, in 1821 Adams warned the U.S. not to get involved in foreign wars “in search of monsters to destroy”. (At that time, Adams was the most experienced diplomat; and he went on to be the sixth U.S. president).

The above phrase uttered by Adams before the House of Representatives is well known, but scholars rarely quote what he said next. Here’s more of his speech, which helps us to understand the moral predicament of U.S. foreign policy today.

“[The U.S.] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.
She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
She is the champion and vindicator only of her own…
“[The U.S] well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence,
she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.
The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force....
She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit....”

Those prophetic words were said 200 years ago and are well known today to our foreign policy elite. However, they deliberately ignore and disregard Adams’ warning. Clearly, the temptation of power and wealth are too great. Foreign adventures are very profitable for the American ruling class. Just look at the conflict in Ukraine.

In the 1960s the U.S. went abroad ‘in search of monsters to destroy’ and became ensnared in the quagmire of Vietnam that killed roughly a million Vietnamese. Then in 1990, and in 2001, we invaded the Middle East ‘in search of monsters’ (First Gulf War, the War on Terror) and left many countries in that region in even more chaos, poverty, and despotism, destroying the lives of millions of people.

In essence, the U.S. became the ‘monster’ that it originally had sought to destroy. [We differ with the author on this point: The US ruling class did not and does not wander the globe looking for wrongs to be righted; it's not a selfless, Quixotesque entity, but a profoundly and ruthlessly selfish machine ready to destroy anyone or anything that blocks its path.—Ed)

U.S. crime. My Lai massacre iconic photo (March 1968)

It’s high time that we Americans face the bitter reality. The Republic is dead. We should now speak of the American Empire. Our era is reminiscent of the end of the Roman Republic more than 2,000 years ago.

Yes, one can argue that America’s first steps toward empire began with the conquest of northern Mexico in the mid 1840s, or with the war against Spain in 1898 and the brutal conquest of the Philippines and Puerto Rico, as well as the Kingdom of Hawaii.

At that time, however, the U.S. government couldn’t exert the full potential of imperial might and total social control that the ruling class today in Washington wields. Thanks to the rise of the modern digital society, the dictator’s dream of total surveillance and concentration of power are a few clicks away. The U.S. ruling class literally has at its disposal all the levers needed to manipulate and control.

Perhaps the most important lever is control of the media and the ‘narrative’. These tools allow the ruling class to fabricate any reality, and then that fake reality is weaponized as a means to cement political, economic and social power.

For example, the U.S. blows up a vital European gas pipeline and there’s barely a word of protest from EU members. Instead, the major media, backed by its ‘experts’, blame Moscow. Everyone nods their head in agreement; and no one bothers to investigate.

Who is this ruling class? Since 2001 and the Orwellian named “War on Terror”, control of U.S. foreign policy has been centralized in an unholy alliance of powerful interests: the military-industrial complex, the national security state, major financial conglomerates, major media corporations, and Big Tech.

 

Decades ago, General Butler (1935) and President Eisenhower (1961) warned about the danger of the military-industrial complex. But today, the concentration of vast power in the hands of our ‘Party of War’ in Washington is unprecedented. The inclusion of the resources of Big Media and Big Tech is what’s different. Now, they can subvert democracy and freedom in the U.S. and across the globe with ease.

In my youth, any journalist who wanted to make a name for himself/ herself relished the opportunity to challenge the government. Today, American journalists are fearful and aware that such criticism can end one’s career. Self-censorship is now the first rule of journalism. But even worse, many journalists eagerly embrace and publish whatever they’re fed by the White House and ‘anonymous’ government sources.

A free and independent media has always been the main bulwark against dictatorship. But today, most media companies gladly collude with the federal government. And so, we need to face a harsh reality — western nations are becoming totalitarian. If there’s no freedom of thought and press, then a country can’t be considered “free”.

Don’t forget — Nazi Germany was one of the world’s most educated, cultured, advanced and prosperous nations. That didn’t prevent Germany from becoming totalitarian. And of course that regime had a bloodlust for foreign conquest. So don’t think that it can’t happen in the U.S.

There comes a point in life when you just can’t stand by and watch more wars and atrocities committed with our taxes, in our name, and cynically in the name of ‘freedom and democracy’.

So, my fellow Americans, and especially those of you who serve the government: Please think very carefully about what type of country you want to leave your children. You were born into a free and democratic America. Don’t you want to leave that same country to your children?

Let’s find a way to break the Party of War’s stranglehold on power, and let’s stop going abroad in search of monsters to destroy.