The U.S. has progressively yielded to the will to power that is at the basis of empire. We’ve had several attempts to take Canada, took HALF of Mexico’s territory on thin pretext, unconstitutionally bought the Louisiana Purchase. (Jefferson didn’t have the authority and he knew it.) We incited Panama to war against Colombia, so that we could get the Canal Zone. We had troops on the ground in Haiti more years in the 20th century than not. We invaded Grenada to “protect” U.S. citizens attending a medical school there, who hadn’t been threatened. Wilson wormed our way into WWI so as to have a seat at the table that carved up the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. We waged a war of genocide against the Sioux, clearly stated as such by General Sheridan. We involved ourselves in the Balkan wars last decade. We involved ourselves in Lebanon, to the deaths of hundreds of Marines. We have coddled Israel, as if we were Zionists more ardent than Theodore Herzl. We brought down the only freely-elected Communist government, ever, through the chicanery of the CIA in Chile, rather than letting the Chileans learn their lessons on their own. We meddled similarly in Nicaragua. We refused to keep our promises to the Phillipines until long after our promised exit date. We have sidled up to the previous great empire, the U.K., helping her and supporting her as she did such lovely things as beat up on the Boers, inventing concentration camps in the process.
Franklin Sanders included the byline quote of James Dobson, regarding our refraining from looting our defeated enemies, to refute it. Truly, except for some inconsequential war souvenirs brought back by soldiers after WWII, we did not loot our defeated enemies in the usual way. However, we did so much more efficiently by means of making the U.S. dollar the world’s “reserve currency,” equivalent roughly to the old mercantilism in which the nation which amassed the most gold “wins.” That rip-off became naked when Nixon finally “closed the gold window” in about 1971. Foreign claimants could thereafter no longer trade their U.S. currency for gold. We bullied and bought our way in the middle east using puppet leaders from the Shah of Iran to the house of Saud. Ironically, many of our former puppets or their nations turned on us, such as Iran, Saddam Hussein, and the Wahhabists of the Saudi peninsula.
The chickens are coming home to roost now, as the remnants of the Bretton Woods financial pact are blowing away in the breeze. We have become foul even in the eyes of Islamists when we attacked Iraq, which had done us no harm, allow homosexuals to marry, and murder millions of unborn babies. We are financially bankrupt as well. We have exported our inflation since 1971. When all those currency claims on the U.S. treasury are repatriated to our shores, a dollar will literally not be worth a single panel of toilet paper.
The U.S. cut its imperialistic teeth during the War of Northern Aggression and the twelve year occupation of the South. It felt good to the New England Unitarian meddlers to be able to run our affairs from afar. Not long after that Teddy Roosevelt sent his great white fleet around the world to shake the big stick in everyone’s face. Only by comparison was the Old South a bastion of modest agrarianism. Jefferson Davis and others had dreams of a great slave empire arching around the Central American isthmus all the way to Brazil, enclosing the Caribbean islands.
Franklin also has it right, I think, in identifying the state religion as the chief unifying glue. An empire does not share common geography, language, culture, race, values, or history. It majors in diversity except for diversity in religion. We must all kiss the scepter — submit that Ceasar (the state) is supreme over all. Every nation worships a god, even ours which claims not to do so. Challenge him in science, in the classroom, in the courtroom, in the currency, or anywhere else and he will make you suffer. Franklin was arrested and persecuted for challenging them in the currency. You cannot challenge Ceasar’s chief prophet Darwin in the classroom or in science. There are piteous remnants of God in the courtroom, but the cursory fashion of swearing in actually demeans the process. I hear that one of our newest dollar coins omits “In God We Trust.” It wasn’t true anyway. All that Masonic imagery on the back of our currency tells a clear story about the pollutions awhile back in our history.
Christianity failed at the outset to unify our nation which was unequivocally covenanted with the God of the Bible. Gary DeMar does a wonderful job of making the most of all of the rich Christian heritage in our nation’s founding and initial years, but the fact is that we compromised when the time came for a formal covenanting with Him. Atheists, deists, Jews, and even “Musselmen,” as they were called then, were cut in on the deal.
It burns deeply to realize thatJane Fonda had some things correct: this really is a fascist nation, and we really are imperialistic. It was no excuse for crawling all over Hanoi’s anti-aircraft guns during the war, but it was true.
I see a hopeful opportunity arriving as the currency fails. Our national religion is Ceasar (the almighty state), and his chief sacrament is the acquisition of money by his favorites. As it says in Isaiah, first chapter, our silver has become dross (Gresham’s law). Would that our churches teach the nascent opportunity as Dagon falls on his face in his temple. Would that Christians would get out of debt, get our churches out of debt, and stay out of debt as much as possible. There is going to be a change of gods nationally. We’ll probably just move from one Baal to another, but maybe Christ could be acknowledged as the only true God.
I rave, again. Where is the church? Endlessly introspecting while neglecting the law of God.