by Bruce Fein. I highly recommend this book.Expositing founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, Washington’s Farewell Address, and John Quincy Adam’s July 4, 1821 address to Congress, Fein cogently illustrates the Founders’ shared devotion to a republic devoted to the blessings of liberty and a constitutionally-limited government for Americans at home, as well as their aversion to the empire-building and foreign intervention that has historically led to the downfall of nations.
Fein also lays out the history of America’s rejection of non-intervention abroad and embrace of military projection across our borders and around the globe. He argues the genesis of Empire started with the fallacious reasons for initiation of war with Mexico in 1848, and the reader sees similar initiations for war through history right down to weapons of mass destruction and Iraq.
Common and deleterious political consequences run through all the wars and foreign interventions, most prominently the aggrandizement of executive power and the unconstitutional abdication of Congressional war-making to the executive. Other common features of Empire include the crippling of rule of law, loss of civil liberties at home, the squandering of vital defense appropriations, and the building of resentment around the globe as a result of a ubiquitous military presence and flagrant disregard for the sovereignty of other nations.
The international War on Terror adds additional constitutional and political deviations from the Founders’ vision for our Republic.
Fein notes that the Empire psychosis (my words, not his) rests on two flawed orthodoxies that most Americans reflexively accept as gospel, what he calls “Twin Myths of the American Empire” (the title of chapter 5). The first orthodoxy is that America must spread democracy and human rights around the globe and then remain in strategically-viable posts in order to maintain global stability. The premise of this orthodoxy is that the US is obligated to spread freedom abroad and that U.S. security depends on such military globe-trotting.
The second orthodoxy is that an American military umbrella providing international stability is vital to economic growth at home and abroad.
Fein succinctly obliterates both orthodoxies. Before and during America’s all-out embrace of global Empire following World War II, history tells a different story that what these orthodoxies hold. Being the world’s policeman makes us less free and less safe at home and comes with a very high price tag in the lives of American military personnel and foreign citizens. It also wastes resources and adds to our national insolvency while stoking resentment around the globe.
Interestingly and unfortunately, “Making the world safe for democracy” has become the unquestioned bedrock of foreign policy for both political parties and the cover-all excuse for projecting American force into sovereign nations abroad. Two years into the Obama administration illustrates presidents of both parties have little interest in returning their office to the constitutionally-limited scope of the Republic. Sadly, Congress is all too ready to neglect their institutional prerogatives to reign in the president, no matter which party controls Congress.
(Oddly, many conservatives eagerly evoke the notion of world democracy policing even though it originated with their ideological nemeses, Woodrow Wilsonian Progressives, as a means of cementing “war socialism” at home during times of peace.)
Fein closes American Empire with a call for the restoration of the American Republic. It is a tall order with steep challenges:
“For seventy years, the American Empire’s orthodoxies have indoctrinated citizens and leaders alike in the belief that the United States has been obligated by divine Providence to made the world safe for democracy and freedom, and to crush every conceivable foreign danger it germinates.”
Ultimately, as Fein suggests, restoration of the Republic begins with changing the substance of public opinion such that elected leaders will feel obliged to again follow the Constitution and wisdom of the Founders. It is a matter of persuasion and numbers: the more minds that are changed the better.
Speaking as a citizen who formerly (and unwittingly) parroted the orthodoxies of Empire, I can attest that minds can indeed change for the better. I have Mr. Fein and a handful of other persistently persuasive, principled, and patriotic lovers of liberty to thank for the wake up call.
Read this book, pass the word, change a mind.
