I’m a libertarian. Yet I’m also what many call an imperialist. I also believe in one world government, though I would grab my rifle in a heartbeat and head off in aid of the first state to secede from the United States. Come with me on an adventure…
I believe in American empire. That isn’t to say that I adore my country in its current form. This monstrosity we’ve created is not America. The modern police state is not America. NSA spying is not America. The welfare state is not America. This is America:
Americans are thinkers. They are arrogant, rebellious and unruly. We mock kings. We do not bow before them. We do battle with nature. We are explorers. We are liberators.
America is less a place than it is an idea. Such novel ideas as that men should not kneel before others, or that the fruits of a man’s labor are his own, and cannot be taken just because he’s outvoted, are ideas that led to the most prosperous nation that ever existed. We’ve moved away from that today.
But let us imagine a new nation. Let us call it, oh, I don’t know, America. Now in this new America we live up to our ideals rather than just piss rhetoric out of our mouths. Why should this culture not dominate the globe?
A friend of mine recently decried the Iraq War, saying that it’s a shame that Iraq has become a terrorist breeding ground. I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer a terrorist breeding ground to a stable, totalitarian torture state. We Americans might be a bunch of cowboys, but don’t think for a minute our deaths are in vain. The destruction of these tyrants is worth our lives regardless which nation we invade. You know why we Americans are so arrogant? You know why we act like we’re better than you? Because we ARE better than you. We spill our blood to liberate this whole god damned planet. Our warriors give their lives cheaply, and it makes their lives all the more valuable.
You don’t find men like this everywhere. I’ve seen Americans fight harder for the liberty of Iraqis than the Iraqis did. I saw the same during my time in the Philippines in 2002. The bulk of these people have lost their freedom to thugs and tyrants due to their own cowardice and decadence. They don’t deserve their liberty. But deserve’s got nothing to do with it. Rights should not have to be earned. In America you will find no dearth of men willing to give their lives in the defense of others, even outside our borders. Why? Because “[w]e hold these truths to be self-evident, 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.”
All men. Not all Americans. All men.
Now, why should such a nation not supplant every pissant dictator, thug, and wannabe tyrant? Why should we leave in place governments that intrude on the rights of man? I recently read an article about prison life in North Korea. How could it possibly be immoral to walk men across the DMZ right now? Make no mistake, I’m not advocating forced military intervention. I’m talking about a volunteer force from our standing military. In my constitution, written elsewhere on this blog I have a military branch dedicated to just this sort of thing.
Do not talk to me of accepting the customs of others. Liberty and the rights of man are not negotiable under your customs. If you do not abide them, then your customs and culture are forfeit. British General James Napier illustrates this perfectly. From Wikipedia:
A story for which Napier is often noted involved Hindu priests complaining to him about the prohibition of Sati by British authorities. This was the custom of burning a widow alive on thefuneral pyre of her husband. As first recounted by his brother William, he replied:
- “Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.”
This brings us to the idea of what America was to be. Our system was to be a federalist one. We were to have a powerful, restrained, central government. We’ve lost sight of that. Properly executed however, this opens the door to valid, legitimate one-world government. Our federal government was not supposed to roll over the states. Each state was to have its own rules and customs. So too should our whole world. There is power in diversity. We should have communists, and monarchies, and republics, and states with obscure religions run by priests and holy men, or racist communities. We should have full anarchist states and places as diverse as a Disney ride. And we should have everything in between. But a man should always have the ability to opt-out and choose his society. One world government that ensures local governments honor this ability can allow every sort of custom and human deviancy to exist. Then the marketplace of ideas will weed out the bad ideas and the good ones will grow. So one-world government could allow for the Indian custom of Sati, so long as it was a custom chosen willingly, not one where your place of birth doomed you into the local culture.
This is why our federal government should exist expressly for the preservation of our natural rights. Past that, each state should be able to choose its own rules and customs.
So why would I grab my rifle and help the first state to secede? Simple. Because everything I’ve espoused is theory. It isn’t practice. In practice, government grows. It doesn’t shrink. It grows and becomes powerful. The more powerful it becomes the more it attracts those that hunger for power. Those that hunger for power expand the state to achieve it. And thus the cycle continues.
