An Anarchist-Imperialist Argument for American Power
Not what many people want to hear, but what everyone needs to understand.
“Checks and Balances, Jefferson, however you and your Party may have ridiculed them, are our only security for the progress of Mind, as well as security of body. Every species of these Christians would persecute Deists, as soon as either sect would persecute another, if it had unchecked and unbalanced power. Nay, the Deists would persecute Christians, and Atheists would persecute Deists, with as unrelenting cruelty, as any Christians would persecute them or one another. Know thyself, human nature!”
- John Adams, the Greatest of the Founders, articulating the foundation of my Illuminist Political Philosophy in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, the Most Overrated of the Founders
I had planned to draft an essay laying out my seemingly contradictory variety of militant American patriotism. However, much of what I intended to argue actually appeared a year ago in this podcast:
Having listened to it again, I stand by it. And the argument here is really only a further extension of it.
I have already made clear that within the realm of practical politics, my approach is "mainstream opinion argued in extreme ways." I am akin to what used to be understood as a "conservative Democrat" or a "liberal Republican."
It's not unreasonable to even characterize me as a "neoconservative," what Irving Kristol infamously labeled "a liberal mugged by reality."
I've worked with enough people associated with the movement at this point to grudgingly qualify. And while my favorite political figure, John Bolton, the former National Security Advisor, is better understood as a traditional Goldwater-Buckley-Reagan libertarian-conservative anti-communist, he too is associated with this tradition.
And as I mentioned previously, he and former Vice President Dick Cheney are who I intend to write in this election cycle: the third one in a row in which I have been unable to advocate for either the Democrat or Republican tickets, as each party has gone too left-wing or too right-wing for me to tolerate.
However, just because I do not appreciate the political Left and Right mucking up our political process, in the realms of abstract ideas and dorm room-style philosophical debates, that's a different story. Discussing ideas is not the same as trying to implement them.
In the broad-value sense, there are plenty of seemingly "extreme views" which I do support. And strange ones. Let's consider another political-philosophical paradox, a cousin of my "Counterculture Conservatism" and "Psychedelic Zionism":
Anarchist Imperialism
Generally these two philosophical tendencies are regarded as opposites: Anarchism seeks to shrink the state until—in Grover Norquist's infamous, immortal words—it can be drowned in a bathtub.
Meanwhile, the imperialist seeks not to only defend the state, but expand it indefinitely until achieving Risk-style global domination.
Thus, the American anarchist position — as embodied on the Far Left by Noam Chomsky and his pal, the late Howard Zinn, and represented on the Far Right by the anarcho-capitalist tradition of the late Murray Rothbard with his acolytes, Lew Rockwell and Ron Paul — regards America as a largely criminal regime, oppressing people both at home and abroad.
Meanwhile, the American "imperialist" position—a term almost universally regarded as a slur—advocates for American global hegemony, for the American values to be the dominant ones on the planet, for keeping in check tyrannical regimes. This has largely existed as the status quo since the end of World War II. America won that war and became the new empire dominating the world. The Cold War was then our effort to maintain that, to prevent the conquest of Western freedom by Russian imperialism.
Honestly, I think it's both possible and necessary to hold both of these visions in mind at the same time.
On the one hand, America has done a lot of "terrible things" throughout our history. We are a flawed people with many primitive, disgusting cultures which have resulted in suffering for both our own citizens and those abroad. Presidential administrations have routinely broken the law, gotten away with it, and subverted what our government is supposed to do. There are a whole lot of fuckin' racist Americans, brain-dead fundamentalists, and cruel bigots of all sorts. And even many so-called "liberal" Americans simply pose as kind people who care, who want to make the world better, when deep down, they just want to fit in with the culture around them.
As George Carlin said, and I cite endlessly, the American public sucks. Most people are terrible. My favorite founder, John Adams, saw that American cultures’ immorality would be the downfall of this country. It certainly was in his time, as proven by the Civil War. Since then, the pattern of Americans' moral confusion generating overwhelming harm has been too clear to ignore.
But on the other hand, anarchists of both Left and Right have no answer for this question. In fact, they’re in deep, black hole-level denial about it.
If you would reject the American Empire, which empire would you rather rule over the world instead? You would disassemble the military industrial complex, shrink the military budget by untold billions, and hobble the powers of the CIA/NSA/FBI… and then what?
When American Power and American Wealth withdraw from the self-defense of free societies against the efforts of what I have written about as the "Axis of Genocide" (Russia, China, Iran, and their "junior partners" Qatar, Turkey, and North Korea), what then?
You think these genocidal regimes simply want to stay put where they are?
They don't want to do what Putin is doing now to Ukraine, what Iran is doing to Israel, what China seeks to do to Taiwan?
So yes, the "Hate America Left" is correct - they have much to hate about who we Americans are as a people. We are the most powerful warriors the planet has ever seen, and we have a criminal government which will fuck up whoever seeks to conquer us.
And yes, "America First" is correct - but not in the way that the fuckin' Far Right populist-nationalists use it: as a fuckin' euphemism for isolationism, for retreat from our American moral duty to stand as the Shining City on the Hill.
“But more than that, after 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge and her glow is held steady no matter what storm. And she's still a beacon, still a magnet for all who must have freedom. For all the pilgrims from all the lost places who are hurdling through the darkness, toward home.” — Ronald Reagan, the Greatest of 20th Century Presidents
America First among the nations, America First in the New World Order of global power, American constitutional values first of all, for all.
As flawed and unfortunate as so many results of our Constitution have become, show me a better one. What blueprint for how a country should organize itself has a greater track record? Which country's government is built in a superior structure to our own?
I've never really gotten any sort of decent, coherent answer to this last question. What country is "better" than the United States? Where would I rather live and raise a family and grow my career? Nowhere.
And, of course, I say that as a militant, fuck-the-Islamists, destroy-Hamas, unapologetic Zionist.
I love you all, my Israeli friends, but your form of government is much worse than ours. No constitution? A *shudder* parliamentary system?
I gather from my Israeli friends and colleagues that, in a sense, Israel is much the same as I've described here about America: certainly flawed, certainly failing to live up to its ideals, but a fuckin' hell of a lot better than the imperialists living next door.
Oh, you don't like Israel? You'd rather have a Shariah-slave state in which LGBTQ individuals get executed? In which adulterers get executed? In which witches and wizards get executed? You want me murdered three times over?
America: love it, leave it, but above all, get the fuck out of the way and let us keep doing what we've done since we bombed the fuck out of Germany and Japan to establish who is really going to run the world.
American Power—the American Empire—is the price of freedom not just for us, but in all free societies around the world.
And I will defend it with my last breath.
Happy fuckin' 4th of July.
Thanks Buddy! Appreciate it!
Lol!
How many beers in were you by the time you finished this? 😉
I totally agree, btw. All those dipshits who want to burn it all down are even more naive than they are ignorant.