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Our founding fathers would never be in favor of our expanding military power, growing throughout the world like an empire. Thomas Jefferson once said, "Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? ... let history answer this question." Historically, instituting control over foreign land over the wishes of those in question might be considered a right wing activity. Usually that which is considered a military dictatorship is one that has a right wing dictator. Today, the U.S. military dominates our budget, our economy, and the lives of those around the world. In the 2000 elections, during the second debate of the Presidential candidates Al Gore and George W. Bush, it was Bush who was concerned for American Might flexing its muscles around the globe. He said (10/11/00):
one way for us to be viewed as the ugly american
is for us to go around the world saying
we do it this way, so should you.
I think the united states must be humble
we must be proud and confident of our values
but humble in the way we treat nations
who are trying to figure out their own course
The Democrat Al Gore, the one who might be considered the "liberal", disagreed and wished to increase military action, and had doubled Bush's military budget proposals. In addition, it was Presidential Candidiate Pat Buchanan, the one considered too right for most of America's right, who wrote the book, "A Republic, Not an Empire" which explains what should be the liberal proposal of retracting our military intervention.
In the same debate, Bush also expressed concern about how the World Bank's third world debts may be more damaging than helpful:
We spend aid, and say we feel better about it, and it
ends up being spent the wrong way
and there are some pretty egregious
examples recently, one being russia
where we had IMF loans that ended up in the pockets of
powerful people, and didn't help the nation
One might think liberals would be concerned if such misguided actions where true, yet Democrat Al Gore wanted to increase the powers of the World Bank. While many Democrats in power agree with Al Gore, the true liberals are protesting this in the streets. An op-ed article in the Washington Times (11/2/00, Page A23), a known conservative paper, is titled, "His own man in full; Nader is the liberal Democrats once were." The author, Suzanne Fields, starts the article by saying, "Ralph Nader is the real McCoy. He's the liberal I was looking for in the old days when I was a liberal." Ralph Nader opposes NAFTA, and WTO, like any true liberal should, yet Democrats consider Nader radical. Buchanan also opposes the WTO, as any American concerned about democracy should, yet he is labeled a right wing extremist. If Americans label concerns for our democracy as radical or extreme, then what is the ideology of average Americans? According to USA Today, in a April 11, 2000 article titled "Buchanan to speak at WTO protests," Buchanan is quoted as saying:
Where I agree with the sea turtles and the
porpoises and (consumer activist) Ralph Nader and
(conservative) Howard Phillips and the union guys
is, when you make a law in the United States of America,
no international organization should have the right
to tell us that we've got to alter or change our laws.
I do believe in the full restoration of America's lost
sovereignty and independence. And I do not believe in
surrendering authority to a World Trade Organization.
Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, and member of the most elite organizations of the planet (Bilderberg, CFR, and Trilateral), explains American thought in a press club meeting of March 28, 1999:
For globalization to work, America can't be afraid to act
like the almighty superpower that it is. The hidden hand
of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's
cannot flourish without McDonald-Douglas, the designer of the
F-15, and the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's
technology is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy
and Marine Corps.
One wonders if the goal for our country is to have a democratic nation-state, or to expand the reaches of the American Empire throughout the world. Thomas Jefferson said, "I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves..." Yet, today, few are concerned that the wealth and power is so concentrated in the few corporate elite. Neither the Republicans nor Democrats will take these up as major issues. Our "liberal media" now sets the standard for the left, and our media is about as complacent to the concentration of power as anybody on the right.
There are real issues, which aren't even touched upon by our candidates or our media, because to do so would be too radical or liberal, so our own population is brainwashed in a cycle of arguing non-issues. Corporate influence on our government, military influence around the world, the enormous income gap, and enormous power gap; these are issues which would strike at the heart of our liberal forefathers. Now in America, they aren't even on the agenda.
Thomas Jefferson once said, "a wise and frugal government... shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned." Workers in America can't even pay the bills without working three jobs, 1 out of every 4 children go to bed hungry, and these issues are ignored. Small farmers and small businesses are being forced out by huge corporations, mergers are concentrating their power, competition as we know it is threatened by mega-conglomerates, yet America is apathetic. The first Americans were businessmen, who wanted free enterprise, but never at the expense of the people, or the Democracy.
Prisons are a growing threat to our crime-breeding society, and is now the new slavery. One out of every hundred Americans are in jail, 25% of the worlds prisoners are right here in America, and its increasing. Another one percent of Americans are homeless, and 22% of the homeless are veterans of our own military. The rich have become so tremendously wealthy, that the top 1% practically owns half the world. There are problems in this country which are appalling and obscene for such a rich nation, yet they are censored, and ignored.
In general, democratic western countries have a variety of political ideologies on the debate floor. From these many opposing ideologies, compromise is reached. These ideologies always include a socialist left ideology, which is the strongest advocate of the lower class and labor class. Even this country had socialist representation, till we started hunting socialists down like Nazis during the McCarthy era. Their presence has never returned to the American scene in any sort of meaningful way, despite lasting representation in almost all other democracies. One can assume that the McCarthy mission was successful in permanently removing the freedom of opposing ideologies to be heard in America.
With growing corruption and censorship, and disappearing freedoms to military powers, one can compare the apparent path of the American Empire to that of any great empire which has come and gone. Our founding fathers' only warning was to keep power in the hands of the people. We have moved so far right, that we don't even mind that the power has been lost to the hands of the few.