For the last several weeks I have taken a break from
commenting on what has been happening in the good old US of A. But like a racehorse
at the starting gate, I have been ready to charge down the track as soon as the
bell would ring, even while I vowed to keep still for these weeks. Instead, I
have been diving through a stack of neglected books. Among them have been
documents from our nation’s early history. The Federalist Papers were basically
penned in 1788 by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and others, in which they
interpreted the proposed Constitution, supporting its ratification by the 13
States. Opposing ratification were The Antifederalists papers, produced by
William Penn, Patrick Henry and others. This was an intelligent, literate debate
vigorously engaged in by scholarly politicians on both sides.
There were two dominant issues. First was the size and power
of government in the projected Constitution, which replaced the Articles of
Confederation dominated by sovereign states. Second was the failure of the
framers to spell out appropriate individual rights. Both of these problems were
in response to what was seen as the despotic English system under the unlimited
power of King George. Both involved the fear of a big government. But what was
meant by big government was far different than what America’s right wing is
currently describing. It had nothing do with the Federal government’s support
of the “general welfare” or the building of a durable infrastructure. It was rather
the despotic use of military power.
The Declaration of Independence spelled out the British
tyranny from which our founders sought to distance this new nation.
Among the charges against in King George:
He has kept
among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our
legislature.
He has affected
to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined
with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and
unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended
legislation:
For quartering
large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting
them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit
on the inhabitants of these states:
The new Constitution sought to insure a small governable military, not
a massive standing army. If the founders objected to English troops in the
colonies, what would they make of the current
overseas deployment of our military with more than
over 700 bases in 120 countries? (Chalmers Johnson,
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic).
In addition, we have
deployed in the United States over 1,200,000 active and reserve troops, and an annual military budget of well over a trillion dollars. If you want to talk about BIG Government,
that’s it! What is more, the military-industrial complex President Eisenhower
warned us against is not only alive and well, but the dominant power in the
American economy.
What has this BIG government given us? In
addition to the trillions of dollars spent—largely responsible for the nation’s
debt—and tens of thousands dead Americans, it has provided us with intervention
in a Vietnamese a civil war—which tragically we lost; a yet uncertain outcome
in Iraq, with the virtual destruction of a once beautiful, history-strewn civilization
with a thousand killed in July of this year; an endless war in Afghanistan with
no clear goal and no exit strategy. The Constitution explicitly states that
Congress can declare war, and none of these ventures has been so declared.
Our BIG government has not made us any
safer—just the opposite.
The undeclared war against terror is now a worldwide
conflict, and promises to continue for the entire century. What our BIG
government has produced is disastrous on very clear pragmatic grounds of the
wars pursued and the world-wide blowback which has come in the wake. And this devastation may lie at the
heart of the American malaise.
Charles Bayer
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