by Peter Schiff, Schiff Gold:
Critics of President Trump are fond of calling his administration an oligarchy of wealthy businessmen. What they fail to realize, however, is that the United States government has long been an oligarchy, prone to extracting wealth from its citizens and unaccountable even to elections.
The following article was originally published by the Mises Institute. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Peter Schiff or SchiffGold.
Why has the United States’ government become so politically dysfunctional? How can it be that the nation—partially founded on John Locke’s principles of liberty and Montesquieu’s concept of separation of powers—today has such a corrupt and oligarchic federal government?
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
As the young political union that it was in 1781, based on the Articles of Confederation, the United States was unique. Unlike the nation-states of the Old Continent, it was based on the principle of limited government, natural rights of its citizens, and popular sovereignty.
Yet, today, the federal government in Washington, DC is pursuing a policy incompatible with these principles, not only towards Americans themselves, but also abroad.
Domestic politics in the US is, superficially, dominated by incessant public fights between different factions of the two ostensibly rival parties, thanks to the collaboration of establishment media and many social networks. Less obvious to the majority, the oligarchic and bipartisan character of the federal government consists in using the enormous political and financial means of the United States mainly to the benefit of a small minority. The majority gets the crumbs spread among a decaying infrastructure.
In terms of foreign policy, the US government can be considered “imperialist” since it tries to impose its will through legal, commercial, and military means, disregarding international law, if necessary. The idea of unipolarity—with the pole in Washington, DC—dates back to the end of the Cold War, but the hegemonic instincts go deeper. US territorial expansion was based on the concept of “Manifest Destiny” already in the early 19th century. The federal government showed, at that time, the same commercial ambitions of domination, as those expressed today in often self-defeating excess and with such dire consequences worldwide. Notably, the US federal government invented a pretext to attack Mexico (1846-1848), overthrew the independent kingdom of Hawaii (1893), declared war on Spain on another pretext (1898), and whipped the Filipinos submission into (1899-1902).
Clearly, Washington, DC pursues a domestic and foreign policy that goes against the founding principles of the United States. This has been possible due to the progressive subjugation of the States to a federal government with messianic ambitions of hegemony. The two critical moments happened—during the drafting of the Constitution, and later, during the Civil War.
The Constitution Became Federalist
The years following the creation of the United States are important to understand the ascendancy of its federal government, today alarmingly unbridled and unchecked. It is necessary to recall first the great debate that took place between Federalists and Anti-Federalists around the new Constitution. This debate clearly showed that, among the Founding Fathers, there were already some who were alarmed by the power that the new Constitution would confer on the new federal government at the expense of the states and the people of the United States.
Indeed, the Anti-federalists—among them also Thomas Jefferson—were opposed to a ratification of the Constitution (1787) to replace the Articles of Confederation (1781), as they thought the latter better guaranteed the rights of the independent states in the Union.
