Governmental Dysfunction Rises with Time
Paul Craig Roberts
The US Constitution with the Bill of Rights dates from 1789. All of the safeguards against central government growth and ability to indebt the country have been eroded. Today the Federal national debt is $30 trillion, about two times the gross domestic product of the 28 countries that comprise the European Union, whose combined populations of 447,007,596 is approximately 120,000,000 larger than the US population.
Except for the 2nd Amendment, all of the civil liberty protections against tyrannical central government in the US Constitution have been eroded. Always, the excuse for setting aside the civil liberties protected by the US Constitution is some perceived threat. During the 1930s, the “depression threat” gave executive branch agencies control over law by giving newly created regulatory authorities the authority to devise the rules that implemented the law. In the 1930s Congress, both House and Senate, became essentially authorizers for executive branch agencies to write the law as it applied. With the New Deal the power of Congress was compromised. Congress lost its constraint on the Executive Branch.
Skipping over other times and instances of constitutional rights erosion, the fabricated “war on terror” during the 21st century permitted the US government during the George W. Bush and Obama regimes to override both habeas corpus and the prohibition on execution of US citizens without trial and conviction of a capital crime. The US Federal Government claimed and exercised the rights to detain suspects indefinitely and to execute them on suspicion alone. Widespread spying on the population violates the privacy provision and became routine. In almost every respect the George W. Bush and Obama regimes destroyed the US Constitution.
During 2019-2021 the orchestrated “Covid Threat” was used by Western governments to impose coercive vaccination with an untested substance put into use by “emergency use authorization” based on the false claim that there were no known treatments or cures. Coerced vaccination is a direct violation of the Nuremberg Laws established by the United States that were used to hang members of the German government for coercive medical experimentation.
The system of law and accountable government set up by the 18th century’s best and brightest was destroyed by the passage of 232 years. Today nothing is left of the United States of the creation. A false history, sponsored by the New York Times and its “1619 Project,” and decades of the demonization of our country’s Founding Fathers in universities and public schools have left the United States portrayed as a criminal and racist enterprise from its founding.
One would think that a country this denounced by its own intellectuals would quietly fade away. Instead, we have the Jewish neoconservatives who control American foreign policy and the American foreign policy narrative who declare our totally discredited country to be history’s choice of the exceptional and indispensable country with the right to rule the world.
Our founding fathers were opposed to foreign interventions. But Washington used WW II to become an Empire. Empires have their own rules. The European, Canadian, Japanese, Taiwanese, Australian puppet states follow Washington’s rules. An empire conducts interventions everywhere, even in the affairs of its puppet states and among its own population.
The American Empire finds its hegemony constrained by two powers, Russia and China. Neither is willing to accept US hegemony. Both have declared adherence to a multi-polar world. The two countries are, in effect, new countries born anew from abandoned ideological dictatorships. Being new they have not acquired the dysfunctional elements that characterize the United States and make the claim of hegemony unrealistic.
At what point does it occur to the foreign policy community that a country rife with critical race theory, identity politics, cancel culture, and wokeism that cultivates self-hate and endless apologies is destined for the trash bin of history, not for hegemony?