Expansionism - The American Empire

There is an excellent book entitled  The American Empire and the Fourth World by Professor Anthony J. Hall which details the history of the Enropean conquest of the Americas, in particular, the founding of the United States of America and Canada. Hall's main thesis is that the genocide, treatment of the native population, exemplified by the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, has outgrown the shores of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to extend to the far reaches of the globe, covertly as corporate globalization, and more overtly by the US roles in defining supranational organizations, such as the Bretton Woods Institutions, the WTO, in the wake of World War II.

Hall makes it quite clear that the techniques used to rob, defraud, murder, drive, deprive indigenous people from, off of their ancestral lands have evolved and expanded, as the US has led the charge to the privatization of lands and wealth, the fencing of the commons since its founding days.  While the rhetoric of "we the people" "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" has inspired many a revolution against the old imperial powers, and the movement for "decolonization," it has in a schizophrenic manner, completely denied the basic sovereign rights of indigenous people whose lands and resources it has coveted, or has been instrumental in turning into the private property of corporations.  The marines have been used to back up the claims of United Fruit, IT & T, oil companies...

The latest assault upon Afghanistan, Iraq, veiled under the "War on Terrorism" are another chapter in the continuing saga of an insatiable desire for more wealth, resources, power.

The quest for global dominance traditionally ends in disaster somewhere in Afghanistan.  I hope that there is time to change US foreign policies away from the ruthless pursuit for power. 

Sun Szu wrote that all war is based upon deception.  Perhaps the self-deception of the rulers is the cornerstone of war.  I wrote a rebuttal to Sun Szu's Art of War, entitled The Art of Life.  Lloyde de Mause in his book on Psychohistory- The Emotional Life of Nations suggests that all rulers reenact their childhood traumas on the world stage (those childhood traumas are often shared by an entire generation who buy into a group "delusion"). De Mause's remedy is enlightened parenting.  Perhaps we need to help parent an entire generation to "grow up" and refrain from engaging in the tragic delusional wars that serve no great purpose.

Civil Rights

Under the veil of equality under the law, American opportunity remains unevenly distributed along race and class lines.  Neighborhoods and schools are segregated apartheid-style.  Our jails and prisons are filled with poor whites, Blacks, and Hispanics.  Wages, education levels, and accumulated assets remain far higher for white families than their black and Hispanic counterparts.  Blue-collar jobs have been disappearing, forcing the most vulnerable into unemployment first.  Mexican laborers continue to be imported and employed in slave labor conditions at exploitative wages to tend our crops.  Our rights have been overshadowed by those of powerful corporations, who have attorneys and politicians to defend them and money to exercise them.  Rhetoric lauding our “comprehensive” legal civil rights rings hollow in a country stricken by poverty and inequality.  We need to have an Economic Bill of Rights, to ensure that everybody can meet their human needs.  Our legal system has to meet the needs of ordinary people, not just the people who can afford the best lawyers.

The Constitution & Government Accountability

We must hold our public officials to their oaths to defend the Constitution and serve the people.  We must impeach them if they break their oath of office and perpetuate high crimes against America and the world.  The federal government must limit its involvement to its stated powers and responsibilities, as required by the Tenth Amendment.  Congress cannot delegate war-making authority to the President, nor can it delegate the power to create money to the privately-owned Federal Reserve.  The checks and balances of the Constitution were not designed to be superseded by an unprecedented concentration of financial power in the hands of a few.  We need to restore the Constitution and the protections granted by the Bill of Rights.