Libertas

The Founding Fathers and The Constitution

In 1776, we declared our independence from Great Britain. We successfully won the war and later adopted a constitution in 1787. Yet, while we were fighting for our freedom, we were enslaving others. We fought the French, the Barbary pirates, and the British again in 1812. We fought Mexico and through war, diplomacy, and money gained half her territory. We paid the price of slavery with a civil war but saved the Union. We made war on the Native Americans and stole their land. We fought Spain and became an Empire.

We don’t like to think of ourselves as imperialists. We prefer to think of ourselves as liberators and heroes, like we were in World War I and II. We dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the Pacific War. We protected the Korean people against communist aggression and tried to do the same in Viet-Nam. We came to the defense of Kuwait in 1991 and repelled Saddam Hussain. After 9/11, we invaded Afghanistan to catch Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. Then we invaded or liberated Iraq, depending on your point of view, and are now weighing the options of military action against Iran. We police the world, fighting a War on Terror and a War on Drugs, from more than 1000 military bases and installations in 156 countries. We have done a lot to be proud of or ashamed of, once again, depending on our point of view.

I don’t know about you, but I didn’t do any of those things. For most of those events, I wasn’t even born. When I was around, I was a kid, going to school, or an adult, teaching and traveling. I never signed the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. I never fought in any war. I never enslaved or liberated anybody. I never stole any land. I never dropped a bomb, shot a gun, or invaded a country.

It’s a silly habit, saying ‘we,’ probably picked up in government propaganda mills, public schools, that is, and reinforced by the media. We do it all the time. I still do it, but we must stop! The government wants us to think in collectivist terms, because when we speak of the crimes of the government, we speak of our crimes. And if we hate those crimes, we start hating America, the people, the culture, ourselves. If we insist on loving our country, we therefore must support, must love our government. We equate the government with the country. We see, . . . we admit to no distinction.

Saddam Hussein and tyrants throughout history used the tactic of forcing their cronies to take part in executions and other crimes to share in the guilt. The American government has not needed to do that. It was drilled into our heads from childhood that we are the government, that America is the government. Every time we say, “we invaded, we bombed, we destroyed, we killed,” we are psychologically allying ourselves to the government. The policy makers and agents carrying out these crimes are relieved of their guilt, because we claim it as ours.

H. L. Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956) "All government, of course, is against liberty."

But I did not do any of those things. You probably didn’t either. The American Federal Government, NO!, people within, compartmentalized, planning and carrying out policies and crimes did. They are the enemy of freedom, Americans, and innocents around the world.

For too long, most of us have fallen for the nonsense of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

H.L. Mencken saw through the beauty and recognized it for what it was:

The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history…the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.

Sic semper tyrannis

Since Lincoln’s death, Americans have believed his myth of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. In this way, the government hides its crimes in the open. In this way, the obvious is hidden. No one believes such evil motives or crimes exists, because few experience such evil in their lives.

Americans are good people. Their neighbors are good people and even the worst among us can hardly conceive of killing on such massive scale. Who can contemplate coldly planning war for the sake of political and economic gain? Who can believe that men would promise peace while conspiring for war? Who can believe their national heroes would send young men – boys! to their death for lies, for prestige, for honor, glory, for a place in history?

It is too evil to believe, so we lie to ourselves, telling ourselves that they died for our freedom, that their deaths had meaning, that because we are good, our government is good, our leaders are good. We look away because the truth is too terrible to behold. We look away, because we can’t bear the thought of our responsibility. We look away because myths are easier to believe.

Recommended:

The Costs of War: America’s Pyrrhic Victories edited by John V. Denson

Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World by Patrick J. Buchanan

Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe by Thomas DiLorenzo

The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War by Thomas DiLorenzo

Lies The Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History by Andrew P. Napolitano