Born: June 21, 1788
Residence: Washington, D.C. and elsewhere
Education: Niccolo Machiavelli, Carl von Clausewitz, John Maynard Keynes
Experience (partial list): Revolutionary War, Northwest Indian War, First Barbary War, War of 1812, Second Barbary War, Mexican-American War, Civil War, Indian Wars, Spanish-American War, Philippine-American War, Banana Wars, World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War, Somalia Intervention, Afghanistan War, Iraq War, ISIS War, Global “War on Terror,” Ukraine Proxy War on Russia.
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Interviewer: I must admit, in all my experience being a regular person, I’ve never interviewed a state before, or anything close to a state, unless you count the Kiwanis Club.
US State: Yeah, yeah. Let’s get on with it. I’ve got a lot on my plate.
Interviewer: So, why do you wish to become a global hegemon?
US State: Didn’t you go to school? It’s my Manifest Destiny. It was ordained by Providence from day one.
Interviewer: The original doctrine covered only the two oceans, from the Atlantic to the Pacific You’re talking about everything.
US State: Well, consider yourself updated. It’s what progress is all about. We knocked out the Mexicans, relocated the aboriginals and let human nature take its course. We spread democracy then and we’re spreading it now.
Interviewer: Is that why we have a nearly trillion dollar military budget? To spread democracy?
US State: Of course. I’m not talking about a pure democracy. That’s idiotic. I think it was Madison who wrote that pure democracies are
spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths.
As you know — I hope — he and the rest of the convention developed a constitutional republic. Popular sovereignty — you guys elect leaders who represent your interests. And they carry out your will.
Interviewer: Right. So the word “democracy” is just shorthand for what you’re spreading. Damn the costs, full-speed ahead.
US State: And you guys love it. “Democracy” sounds so anti-authoritarian. By definition you can’t have tyrants in a democracy, and that’s what the Revolution was about, right? You called the king a “royal brute.” When people talk about a constitutional republic they get confused. We never want a confused electorate. “Democracy” means freedom. Keep it simple.
Interviewer: A lot of people, myself included, think the words of John Quincy Adams, delivered on the Fourth of July in 1821 to the House of Representatives, should define our foreign relations, especially today. It’s a long speech, some 8500 words, but here is the relevant passage:
Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence, has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.
She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.
She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign Independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.
The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brow would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of Freedom and Independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an Imperial Diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.
US State: Seriously, what bearing to reality do those words have? Today, none. Yesterday, none. It has a feel-good message but that’s not the world we live in. It never has been. Political life is about power. Period. All the other stuff is for the masses. I guess Quincy was a good Secretary of State but when he became president he was kicked out after one term, like his father, and the country made way for Andrew Jackson, the bank killer.
Quincy was a nationalist and very much at home with a national bank. During his presidency he got along well with Nicholas Biddle, the bank’s president. Jackson vetoed the bank bill in 1832. In that sense Jackson was the freedom fighter, not Quincy. In 1819 McCulloch v. Maryland upheld Congress’s power to establish a national bank and thereby regulate the value of the nation’s currency. Chief Justice Marshall said, “there is no phrase in the [Constitution] which, like the articles of confederation, excludes incidental or implied powers.” There you have it. Quincy didn’t blink. He approved the bank. His essay was hypocrisy.
Interviewer: Regulating the dollar is what the Fed has done since 1914, and it’s lost 98% of its value. In 1914 a good annual income was $10,000. Today it would mean $300,000. How many people make that much? But a dollar in 1800 still had roughly the same value in 1900. Quincy was wrong about a national bank, but his thoughts on foreign entanglements are valid for all time.
US State: Not in this world. That’s why we have the Fed, to fund our foreign affairs. Without it we would be at the mercy of nuclear-powered Russians or Chinese, and our allies would sink into oblivion.
Interviewer: The world is at the mercy of any country with a nuclear arsenal. That’s insane.
US State: Our enemies will blink first, we guarantee it. And people learned to get along with inflation long ago. Wait and see. We might have to spill a little blood, but we’ll reach a point where the world will answer to us. Safety and liberty — what good is one without the other?
Well?
Interviewer: Well, if it were up to me you wouldn’t get the job.
US state: Which is why we’ve taken it out of your hands.
