Many countries occasionally will replace their constitutions,
re-write their laws and effectively re-create themselves. This can be
occasioned by a huge political shift, a coup, a war or something along those
lines.
I would argue the same events and shifts have occurred within
American history but because of the American narrative regarding the
Constitution, the document itself remains in place even though its
interpretations become more tortured and over time it becomes so subverted as
to in many instances become close to meaningless.
The first shift or end
of the 1st Republic occurred with the US Civil War which of
course wasn't an actual Civil War. It was a war of secession. The Confederacy
wasn't trying to capture Washington and take over control of the United States.
It sought to break-away and form a new country. The war fundamentally changed
the nature and narrative of the country. States Rights were deemed dead and the
Federal government took on new powers and obligations.
It took a great deal of time for the implications of these
new powers to be worked out. The seeds were planted and then for a time the
principles lay dormant as the political leadership remained divided and the
country tried to heal its wounds.
In the meantime the US finished its westward expansion. This
was no longer a trickle of pioneers or a pioneer led movement. This and the consequent
series of Indian Wars that followed were deliberate and orchestrated policy.
The country industrialised. The Republican Party which came
out the big winner in the war implemented business friendly policies.
Industrialisation demanded workers and thus the need to open up immigration.
The nature of the country and literally its composition began to change. Immigration
and the new industrial society would destroy the social consensus and provoke a
host of new legal questions. Many principles would now be challenged and their
implications put to the test. Everything from speech and religion to the nature
of social infrastructure, property and liability would begin to change.
The idea of status quo
ante bellum, the notion that things are going to revert to what they before
the war has been demonstrated to be pure fiction. No one wins a war and fails
to capitalise on their victory. This capitalising, this shift may have been
done in a sloppy and inefficient manner, but the very nature of the country
changed and with it the Constitution and its interpretation. Many continue to
refuse to accept this.
This is why Conservatism in recent years has shifted the
narrative back in history. In the 1950's and 60's the desire was to roll back
the New Deal. This failed in part due to the fact that many people who were
intuitively conservative and yet came through the Depression and war felt
positively about FDR and his leadership. In many cases their families had
benefitted from his policies and programmes.
When the Great Society came into being the conservative
movements of the 1970's sought to undo it. They could ignore the New Deal and
focus instead on the LBJ and the 1960s. That gained traction even among the
World War II/Depression era folks. The reasons are beyond this discussion.
Today the WWII and Depression era generation has all but died
off. After Reagan and Bush I's betrayals as well as further changes under
Clinton and Obama the conservative movement is seeking what we might call a
Full Rollback. They want to undo every change and return to the era before the
Civil War.
And it is for that reason that their policies will in the end
lead to another one.
The Third Republic
But then the United States shifted again around the time of
the Spanish-American War. States Rights were dead. The frontier was closed.
Manifest Destiny needed to be transformed. The Monroe Doctrine could finally be
implemented in a serious and deliberate manner.
The US launched into trans-continental imperialism by seizing
the Philippines and by engaging in Gunboat Diplomacy. Here's the subjective
element. It could be argued this impulse was already nascent in American moves
toward Japan in the 1850's and their heavy involvement in China.
But certainly the dawn of the twentieth century marked a
serious change in American policy and thus its laws, relationship to the press,
commerce etc...
A new America was taking shape. While genetically related to
the previous incarnation, the post-
Civil War Second Republic, the new America would have to all but
reconstitute itself. But because of the narrative, the Constitution itself would
remain an object of veneration... even if it was becoming an all but dead
document.
The US launched a new era of interventions into Latin America,
worked to support industry and business interests abroad and seemed eager to embrace
international involvement and foreign entanglement. Many blame Progressivism
for this shift. That was part of the equation to be sure. But international expansion
and imperialism were a necessary consequence of the Capitalist system itself.
This culminated with US involvement in WWI. The tensions were
exposed when domestic opposition to the war began to develop. The country began
to learn that imperialism and democracy don't go together. The Bolshevik
revolution that occurred during the war shook the world but also affected US
domestic law and the nature of its enforcement.
The country was ripped apart by Prohibition, the rise of
organised crime, the Depression and popular support for 'heroic' criminals and
communistic ideas.
Internationalism was fundamentally changing the nature of the
country both abroad.... and at home.
As Chalmers Johnson has suggested:
"...having achieved
the industrial foundations of military might, the United States needed to pay
attention to the global balance of power and modify its institutions
accordingly. But there is no doubt about what we lost in doing so. Washington's
warnings about the dangers of a large, permanent military establishment to
American liberty would be ever more worshiped and less heeded over time, while
the government came to bear an ever-vaguer resemblance to the political system
outlined in the Constitution of 1787." (The Sorrows of Empire p.46)
Johnson is correct in his assessment but there's another
point he makes that many on the Right seem to totally miss. Industrialisation
and Capitalism are what led to empire. The idea that a return to a libertarian
Free-market will somehow eliminate empire is pure fiction. Empire and
Capitalism go together. It is simply the advanced phase of the Capitalist
system.
The same thing can be pointed out to someone like Bernie
Sanders. You can criticise Wall Street all you want but unless you're going to
take on the imperialist project as well, your policies are dead on arrival. Wall
Street (Finance Capital) will always demand imperialist expansions and thus the
apparatus it develops.
The Fourth Republic
World War II allowed the American Establishment to
reconstitute itself and reassert a new narrative. America went from being but
one empire in a multi-polar world to a Superpower sealed with the dropping of
atomic bombs on Japan. The United States completely reoriented itself creating
a new permanent military-industrial complex, asserting its power and influence
over large sectors of the earth and at home a new inquisition was formed led by
figures like Nixon and McCarthy. The country had fundamentally changed once
more and allegiance to the new imperialism trumped all other concerns. Free
Speech and thought were all but outlawed. The Executive Branch was afforded new
powers and all of society was now effectively part of the war and war effort.
The Cold War was an era of intrigue and espionage and the newly formed CIA was
unleashed. The corrupt FBI dominated by the criminal J Edgar Hoover also
trampled on the constitutional rights of citizens. The Constitution was all but
dead. That fact that the corpse was still warm deceived many regarding the true
state of affairs.
The Fifth Republic was born in 1989 with the collapse
of the Soviet Union. Once again we can tweak dates and concepts. We could mark
1991 or 2001 for that example but I view the changes that took place after 2001
as ratifications of the agenda birthed in 1989. The Patriot Act and the
subsequent abuses and anti-constitutional legislation were a result of the
digital age in computers and communications but were merely extensions of the
pernicious agenda born with the fall of the USSR. Yes, the Soviet Union would
officially last until the eve of 1992, but it was dead in November 1989.
The United States launched the unipolar project, a global
empire exceeding all historical precedent and bent on preventing any rivals
from daring to challenge its hegemony. That fact that we still have people
dreaming of a constitutionally Originalist Frontier-Agrarian society in our
present era presents a sad even dangerous commentary on the power of
propaganda, the state of American education, delusion and idolatry. The legal
framework of the founders isn't just a corpse. It's a skeleton.
The prowess of American propaganda is formidable. The US has
the most powerful empire in the history of the world and yet the majority of
its citizens have failed to realise it. A large number of them are still
fighting the Civil War and have utterly failed to understand what the war
actually meant and what the past 150 years have been about.
This paradigm shift was also signified by war. The invasion
of Panama sent a message to the world that the United States would not 'stand
down' in light of the Soviet collapse. It was also a message to old allies that
a new era had dawned. Many former friends, collaborators and co-conspirators would
be left out in the cold.
The Gulf War of 1990-91 was a portent of a new world order, a
new era dominated by the United States of America. It was a sign and signal of
American geopolitical, military and technological power. Like the atomic bomb
it signified a new type of air/technological war and a global footprint.
The US subsequently worked to strengthen and expand NATO,
consolidate control over Europe, decimate and destabilize Russia and exploit
China. The fact that there were schizophrenic and contradictory elements to
this policy shouldn't be surprising. A global empire of this order was terra incognita and complex beyond
conception. But an empire also needs enemies and justifications for its
actions. The contradictions generate instability. This is a problem to some, an
ocean of opportunity to others.
The 2001 attacks were justification for a new
techno-espionage and military industrial complex, a new era of militarised
privatisation, and ultimately a new type of Cold War. With Communism gone,
Terrorism became the new enemy, the platform and rationalisation for a new
series of legislation, wars and investments in an unprecedented and
constitutionally unjustifiable and wholly novel type of power-infrastructure.
The CIA under Dulles and the Stasi under Mielke would have
been incapable of even dreaming of this kind of power and access to information.
Once again Chalmers Johnson:
"After Congress voted in October 2002 to give the
president unrestricted power to use any means, including military force and
nuclear weapons, in a preventive strike against Iraq whenever he—and he
alone—deemed it 'appropriate,' it would be hard to argue that the governmental
structure laid out in the Constitution of 1787 bears much relationship to the
one that prevails today in Washington." (Nemesis p.60)
It is ironic the very people that profess 'Originalism' and
'Textualism' promote and defend this present paradigm. It's laughable and
tragic... only if they actually believe it. Originalism is one of the great
shams foisted on the judiciary and utilised as a propaganda tool in
manipulating the simple.
The United States of today is the very antithesis of the
principles laid out in the documents of formation. Whether all the founders really
believed those ideas is something different. They cannot co-exist with an
empire. The Masonic and Greco-Roman imagery so dominant in Washington DC seems
to indicate the founders did have imperial ambitions all along and even the antebellum era exposes some of this
impulse. If that was the case, and if indeed the present US Empire represents
the pleroma, the fullness and
fulfillment of their project then indeed the joke is on them. If true it only
betrays their shortsightedness and political naiveté. The laws and principles
of the Constitution are incompatible with imperialism. But they are all the
more incompatible with Industrial Capitalism and the empire it necessitates.
The founders could not have foreseen this development but likely would have
celebrated it nonetheless.
The Sixth Republic if it comes about will be a Fascist
State, the culmination and necessary conclusion of these trends. There are many
possibilities that could bring about this scenario and it could just as easily
fragment and self-destruct before that ever happens. But one way or another,
the status quo is unsustainable. The United States, even as we know it today in
its Fifth Republic form, will not last more than a generation or two. Global
reach, success and power will mean war abroad and repression at home. Failures
on the international front will likely lead to economic collapse and domestic
instability. The only thing that might hold together a mix of global power and
domestic instability is a totalitarian state. Whether it takes a hard or soft
form will depend on a host of factors.
Freedom of speech, press, right to assembly, petition, due
process and privacy are all rapidly disappearing. Once this is formally
(openly) codified and socially enforced, the new era will be upon us. At that
point the only 'right' will be to silently and submissively obey. Whether this new
order ends up looking like Franco's Spain or Honecker's GDR is really the only point
of contention in most of our present political discourse... even if the
politicians themselves fail to realise it.
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