The American Empire Part 1

The American Empire.

by Scott Nearing.

I. THE PROMISE OF 1776

1. _The American Republic_

The genius of revolution presided at the birth of the American Republic, whose first breath was drawn amid the economic, social and political turmoil of the eighteenth century. The voyaging and discovering of the three preceding centuries had destroyed European isolation and laid the foundation for a new world order of society. The Industrial Revolution was convulsing England and threatening to destroy the Feudal State.

Western civilization, in the birthpangs of social revolution, produced first the American and then the French Republic.

Feudalism was dying! Divine right, monarchy, aristocracy, oppression, despotism, tyranny--these and all other devils of the old world order were bound for the limbo which awaits outworn, discredited social inst.i.tutions. The Declaration of Independence officially proclaimed the new order,--challenging "divine right" and maintaining that "all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are inst.i.tuted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Life, liberty and happiness were the heritage of the human race, and "whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to inst.i.tute a new government laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem likely to effect their safety and happiness."

Thus the rights of the people were declared superior to the privileges of the rulers; revolution was justified; and the principles of eighteenth century individualism were made the foundation of the new political state. Aristocracy was swept aside and in its stead democracy was enthroned.

2. _The Yearning for Liberty_

The nineteenth century re-echoed with the language of social idealism.

Traditional bonds were breaking; men's minds were freed; their imaginations were kindled; their spirits were possessed by a gnawing hunger for justice and truth.

Revolting millions shouted: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!" Sages mused; philosophers a.n.a.lyzed; prophets exhorted; statesmen organized toward this end.

Men felt the fire of the new order burning in their vitals. It purged them. They looked into the eyes of their fellows and saw its reflection.

Dreaming of liberty as a maiden dreams of her lover, humanity awoke suddenly, to find liberty on the threshold.

Through the ages mankind has sought truth and justice. Vested interests have intervened. The powers of the established order have resisted, but the search has continued. That eternal vigilance and eternal sacrifice which are the price of liberty, are found wherever human society has left a record. At one point the forces of light seem to be winning. At another, liberty and truth are being ruthlessly crushed by the privileged masters of life. The struggle goes on--eternally.

Liberty and justice are ideals that exist in the human heart, but they are none the less real. Indeed, they are in a sense more potent, lying thus in immortal embryo, than they could be as tangible inst.i.tutions.

Inst.i.tutions are brought into being, perfected, kept past their time of highest usefulness and finally discarded. The hopes of men spring eternally, spontaneously. They are the true social immortality.

3. _Government of the People_

Feudalism as a means of organizing society had failed. The newly declared liberties were confided to the newly created state. It was political democracy upon which the founders of the Republic depended to make good the promise of 1776.

The American colonists had fled to escape economic, political and religious tyranny in the mother countries. They had drunk the cup of its bitterness in the long contest with England over the rights of taxation, of commerce, of manufacture, and of local political control. They had their fill of a mastery built upon the special privilege of an aristocratic minority. It was liberty and justice they sought and democracy was the instrument that they selected to emanc.i.p.ate themselves from the old forms of privilege and to give to all an equal opportunity for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Political democracy was to place the management of community business in the hands of the people--to give them liberty in the control of public affairs. The highest interest of democracy was to be the interest of the people. There could be no higher interest because the people were supreme. The people were to select the public servants; direct their activities; determine public policy; prescribe the law; demand its enforcement; and if need be a.s.sert their superior authority over any part of the government, not excepting the const.i.tution.[1]

Democracy, in politics, was based on the idea that public affairs could best be run by the public voice. However expert may be the hand that administers the laws, the hand and the heart that renders the final decision in large questions must belong to the public.[2]

The people who laid the foundations for democracy in France and the United States feared tyranny. They and their ancestors had been, for centuries, the victims of governmental despotism. They were on their guard constantly against governmental aggression in any form. And they, therefore, placed the strictest limitations upon the powers that governments should enjoy.

Special privilege government was run by a special cla.s.s,--the hereditary aristocracy--in the interest and for the profit of that cla.s.s. They held the wealth of the nation--the land--and lived comfortably upon its produce. They never worked--no gentleman could work and remain a gentleman. They carried on the affairs of the court--sometimes well, sometimes badly; maintained an extravagant scale of social life; built up a vicious system of secret international diplomacy; commanded in time of war, and at all times; levied rents and taxes which went very largely to increase their own comfort and better their own position in life. The machinery of government and the profits from government remained in the hands of this one cla.s.s.

Cla.s.s government from its very nature could not be other than oppressive. "All hereditary government over a people is to them a species of slavery and representative government is freedom." "All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny.... To inherit a government is to inherit the people as if they were flocks and herds."[3]

4. _The Source of Authority_

The people were to be the source of authority in the new state. The citizen was to have a voice because he was an adult, capable of rendering judgment in the selection of public servants and in the determination of public policy.

All through history there had been men into whose hands supreme power had been committed, who had carried this authority with an astounding degree of wisdom and integrity. For every one who had comported himself with such wisdom in the presence of supreme authority, there were a score, or more likely a hundred, who had used this power stupidly, foolishly, inefficiently, brutally or viciously.

Few men are good enough or wise enough to keep their heads while they hold in their hands unlimited authority over their fellows. The pages of human experience were written full of the errors, failures, and abuses of which such men so often have been guilty.

The new society, in an effort to prevent just such transgressions of social well being, placed the final power to decide public questions in the hands of the people. It was not contended, or even hoped that the people would make no mistakes, but that the people would make fewer mistakes and mistakes less destructive of public well-being than had been made under cla.s.s government. At least this much was gained, that the one who abused power must first secure it from those whom he proposed to abuse, and must later exercise it unrestrained to the detriment of those from whom the power was derived and in whom it still resided.

The citizen was to be the source of authority. His word, combined with that of the majority of his fellows, was final. He delegated authority.

He a.s.sented to laws which were administered over all men, including himself. He accepts the authority of which he was the source.

5. _The American Tradition_

This was the American tradition. This was the language of the new, free world. Life, liberty and happiness; popular sovereignty; equal opportunity. This, to the people of the old countries was the meaning of America. This was the promise of 1776.

When President Wilson went to Europe, speaking the language of liberty that is taught in every American schoolroom, the plain people turned to him with supreme confidence. To them he was the embodiment of the spirit of the West.

Native-born Americans hold the same idea. To them the Declaration of Independence was a final break with the old order of monarchical, imperial Europe. It was the charter of popular rights and human liberties, establishing once for all the principles of self-government and equal opportunity.

The Statue of Liberty, guarding the great port of entrance to America, symbolizes the spirit in which foreigners and natives alike think of her--as the champion of the weak and the oppressed; the guardian of justice; the standard-bearer of freedom.

This spirit of America is treasured to-day in the hearts of millions of her citizens. To the ma.s.ses of the American people America stands to-day as she always stood. They believe in her freedom; they boast of her liberties; they have faith in her great destiny as the leader of an emanc.i.p.ated world. They respond, as did their ancestors, to the great truths of liberty, equality, and fraternity that inspired the eighteenth century.

The tradition of America is a hope, a faith, a conviction, a burning endeavor, centering in an ideal of liberty and justice for the human race.

Patrick Henry voiced this ideal when, a pa.s.sionate appeal for freedom being interrupted by cries of "Treason, treason!" he faced the objector with the declaration, "If this be treason, make the most of it!"

Eighteenth century Europe, struggling against religious and political tyranny, looked to America as the land of Freedom. America to them meant liberty. "What Athens was in miniature, America will be in magnitude,"

wrote Tom Paine. "The one was the wonder of the ancient world; the other is becoming the admiration, the model of the present." ("The Rights of Man," Part II, Chapter 3.) The promise of 1776 was voiced by men who felt a consuming pa.s.sion for freedom; a divine discontent with anything less than the highest possible justice; a hatred of tyranny, oppression and every form of special privilege and vested wrong. They yearned over the future and hoped grandly for the human race.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "It is, Sir, the people's const.i.tution, the people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people."--Daniel Webster's reply to Hayne, 1830. "Speeches and Orations." E. P. Whipple, Boston, Little, Brown and Co., p. 257.

[2] Tom Paine held ardently to this doctrine, "It is always the interest of a far greater number of people in a Nation to have things right than to let them remain wrong; and when public matters are open to debate, and the public judgment free, it will not decide wrong unless it decides too hastily!" "Rights of Man," Part II, Ch. 4.

[3] "Rights of Man," Thomas Paine. Part II, Chapter 3.

II. THE COURSE OF EMPIRE