DDP Newsletter Vol. XXXIX, No. 4
In these days of forever wars, we face rising threats to our way of life. Will we live under a system of freedom and prosperity, or will we be ruled over and our liberties treated as “privilege” that can be given or taken based on the judgment of a ruling class?
In trying to identify good guys and bad guys, friends and foes, some little-known historical events, and facts on some important persons, may provide helpful insight.
Key issues include slavery and control of the levers of power.
Abraham Lincoln emancipated American slaves in 1863, but in 1861 the Emancipation Edict, which resulted in the freeing of more than 23 million serfs, was passed and successfully carried out by Czar Alexander II. In 1856 he stated: “You can yourself understand that the present order of owning souls cannot remain unchanged. It is better to abolish serfdom from above, than to wait for that time when it starts to abolish itself from below. I ask you to think about the best way to carry this out.”
The success of this edict went down in history as one of the greatest accomplishments for human freedom, and Czar Alexander II, who reigned 1855–1881, became known as the ‘Great Liberator,’ for which he was beloved around the world.
Few are aware of Russia’s role in saving the Union, writes Cynthia Chung (https://tinyurl.com/2p9bsvmj). By 1840, American slave cotton was the centerpiece of the British Empire’s world cheap-labor system. In 1862, the first critical phase of the Civil War, Lincoln sent an urgent letter to the Russian Foreign Minister Gorchakov, informing him that France was ready to intervene militarily and was awaiting England.
Gorchakov replied: “We are very, very anxious that…any course should be pursued—which will prevent the division which now seems inevitable. One separation will be followed by another; you will break into fragments.” The Russian Navy arrived on both the east and west coastlines of the U.S. in the autumn of 1863. While not intervening in the war itself, Russia blocked England and France from fighting for the Confederacy.
Czar Alexander II stated that he did this out of love for Russia, “because I understood that Russia would have a more serious task to perform if the American Republic…were broken up and Great Britain should be left in control of most branches of modern industrial development.” He recognized the “American system” as the only economic system to have successfully challenged the system of empire, which he identified as the root of all slavery.
As economist Henry C. Carey stated in The Harmony of Interests (1851):
One [system] looks to pauperism, ignorance, depopulation, and barbarism; the other in increasing wealth, comfort, intelligence, combination of action, and civilization. One looks towards universal war; the other towards universal peace. One is the English system; the other,…the American system,…the only one ever devised [with] the tendency of…elevating while equalizing the condition of man throughout the world.
Other admirers of the American system were Otto von Bismarck, Japanese modernizers, and Sun Yat-sen.
“With such a glorious outlay of cooperation and common interests across the globe united against an economic system of empire,” Chung asks, “what went wrong? How did we end up where we are today?” She suggests looking at some of the major assassinations and soft coups that removed American-system proponents in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including: President Lincoln, Czar Alexander II, President Garfield, Bismarck, President McKinley, Czar Nicholas II, and Sun Yat-sen.
As Lincoln said in his debates with the slave power’s champion Stephen Douglas, there is “the eternal struggle between these two principles—right and wrong—throughout the world…. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings.” The king is now replaced by self-appointed, likely faceless rulers.
A more recent assassination and soft coup targeted President John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Few remember that Nixon was America’s most popular President—he got 17 million more votes than his opponent, but 2 years later he was forced to resign and was replaced by a President nobody voted for.
Nixon believed that elements in the federal bureaucracy were working to undermine the American system of government. On June 23, 1972, he met with the then-CIA director, Richard Helms, and suggested he knew “who shot John,” implying that the CIA was directly involved. The story about a break-in at the Watergate office building had just been published. Four of the five burglars worked for the CIA. Intel agencies were working secretly to discredit people like Nixon. Permanent Washington is in charge of our political system, states Tucker Carlson (https://tinyurl.com/3awz7emj). Even if their closet holds no skeletons, politicians fear having child pornography planted on their computers (https://tinyurl.com/3dvndhu6).
JFK had been determined to dismantle the CIA and rein in the military-industrial complex. Within two years of his assassination, all his policies had been reversed (https://tinyurl.com/2b4b76rt).
Identifying the Foe—led by the Prince of Lies—is fraught. Some would blame Russia, and try to cancel Dostoyevsky and Tchaikovsky—instead of Communism, which aims to destroy private property, individual rights, and all authority that challenges the Party. The headquarters of Communism is no longer in Moscow. Is it in Davos, Washington D.C., New York City—or everywhere? And where is the American system?
The “77-Years War,” which began in 1914 and ended with the end of the Cold War, wiped out around 8 percent of humanity, and there is still no peace on earth. To what extent is America responsible? David Stockman writes that Woodrow Wilson plunged the U.S. into the Great War, desiring to play “the noblest part that has ever come to the son of man” (https://tinyurl.com/vtwrdb7x). His intervention destroyed the liberal international economic order of the late 19th century, which featured honest money, relatively free trade, and rapidly growing global economic integration, resulting in rising living standards, stable prices, massive capital investment, prolific technological progress, and pacific relations among the major nations.
After WW I, one of America’s most popular though later denigrated Presidents, Warren Harding (serving 1921–1923), achieved the largest global-disarmament agreement ever. However, his moratorium ended because the vengeful victors at Versailles never ceased exacting their revenge on Germany (tinyurl.com/3mt687ad). At the end of the Cold War, the War Party found or even created new enemies, including Iran, writes Stockman (https://tinyurl.com/3mt687ad). What gave rise to totalitarianism and is destroying the American system? Why was the prospect for lasting peace replaced by the brink of WW III? A corrected perspective from history may lead us to the needed clues (https://tinyurl.com/4mdn65z2).