Mr. President, your speech delivered on September 1, 2022, at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, PA has left me thinking for a long time now on the significance of your remarks and how deeply implicated I might be in them in a manner you might not have imagined.
Your speech may be summarized in two sentences. First, it was a clarion call to halt what you called the ongoing threats to our democracy. Second, you declared MAGA Republicans to be guilty of threatening our democracy. An ominous but accurate conclusion would be to state that your speech was a declaration of war against approximately fifty percent of the American populace.
But President Biden, a word of correction is needed. Rather than correctly refer to our unprecedented political identity as a republic, you deliberately used the ghastly term democracy. The United States of America is most emphatically not a democracy; and should we ever regress to become one, it should be destroyed as quicky as possible. We are a constitutional republic. There is a huge difference between a constitutional republic and a democracy, and you know it. As the philosopher Immanuel Kant realized in the 18th century, democracies are dangerous phenomena.
So, Mr. President, here is a brief disquisition on the difference: with a republic such as the one we retain in the United States, power rests in the hands of the individual citizens and laws are made by elected representatives of the people. In a democratic system, something much different occurs: laws are made by the majority, and the will of a majority can and does override the existing rights of citizens.
The powers of government are strictly limited in a republic and kept in check by the three branches of government. There is no majority that can ever arbitrarily deprive the individual of his property, his due process, and his natural, God-given rights. A constitution protects our inalienable rights from being violated by the government, even one that has been elected by a majority of voters. In a “pure democracy,” the majority is not restrained in this manner. It can impose its will on the minority.
Remember that the Palestinian terror organization Hamas was voted into power via a democratic process, as was Adolf Hitler’s regime. But you know all this; so why the deliberate attempt to refuse to identify what we are as a nation—a republic? Could the explanation lie in the existential carnage left in the wake of Antifa violence and Black Lives Matter rioting; the totalizing ideologies of Woke Supremacists, Critical Race Theory, and cancel culture in general; and the disgraceful unwillingness of officials in Democrat-run cities to enforce the law and prosecute criminals? Democracy is the political system that unleashes such nihilistic forces and policies. Democracy is the system that makes it possible for lives and businesses to be destroyed by cancel culture, by left-wing assaults against our First Amendment, by Woke Supremacists such as the trans-fascists who pit biological males against biological women in sports, and by the complete decimation of the Western canon in our universities.
You invoke the term democracy knowing full well that our America is not one, in order to legitimize the concept in the mind of the public and to enable majoritarian groups to impose their will on the smallest but most significant minority on earth: the individual.
But let me return to the substance of your talk here. You established a non-negotiable binary that collapses into one conceptually vague accusation that those who desire to Make America Great Again (MAGA) are threats to the country. You did not limit your condemnation to extremists; instead, you attacked a broad swath of individuals including dissenting liberals, old-fashioned independents, and independent conservatives such as myself.
Your motive is obvious. You oppose the audacious idea of American exceptionalism and superiority—as did your former Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama, who performed his love of American soft-power, leading from behind, and who apologized for a dedication to the promotion of American exceptionalism in a speech titled “A New Beginning” in 2009. It was a speech which served as an admonishment to the most politically moral country in the Middle East—Israel—by announcing, “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop.”
One cannot be a settler on one’s indigenous lands. One can only be a heroic and noble pioneer. What is it that you have, Mr. Biden, against the idea of Making America Great Again? Against the feeling of rational love for one’s country? Against the exaltation and pride in the moral and political achievements this country has made by bringing more people into the domain of the ethical and, therefore, into the pantheon of the human community?
You are afraid that your administration, which makes federal cases out of misgendering one’s pronouns but increasingly reduces murder cases to misdemeanor charges, will not be able to withstand the people’s demand for an increase in the implacable, intransigent application of the law. Your administration allowed Antifa and Black Lives Matter full license to burn down our cities and loot small businesses, thereby destroying the lives of innocent human beings. It, too, has allowed the idea pathogens of Critical Race Theory and Woke ideology, cancel culture and assaults against our First Amendment to infect our K-12 schools, and turn our universities into national security threats populated by welfare scholars—the professoriate that hates America, capitalism and the American people and which, above all, produces enemies of the state. Our young people are taught to hate their country, to spit in the face of its unprecedented achievements, and to regard our Constitution as a document to be ultimately abolished.
Your attempts, however, to stigmatize the MAGA movement will fail for the simple reason that your puerile and simplistic desire to link American greatness to a Republican agenda fails the reality test.
I am an American Supremacist. I believe in American Supremacy. America ought to rule and govern the lesser nations and states in the world. Many of them are like sinkholes, actually, which, like poor neighborhoods, drag down the regional value of where they are ensconced.
Nature abhors a vacuum. If we do not achieve a new Manifest Destiny and colonize the world with our political values, then some two-bit rotten and corrupt nations or a cabal of them will do it. The governments of China, Russia, and Iran immediately come to mind.
In an imperfect world, conceptual and moral distinctions have to be made. We all know that America is not the political equivalent of many countries in this world. Yes—it is a great experiment; and the reason that experiment works is because people from all walks of life, those with varied political orientations, strive each day to make this country noble, heroic and majestic. They know that our destiny is to achieve political immortality. The soul of our nation is immortal. Our country is devoted not to bringing heaven to earth, but instead, to raising our republic to the heavens. We inhabit stories to make sense of our lives. Those stories, our American stories, are open-ended—and because of this we can live on in the global imagination forever.
Our country is a parable of eternal hope. The United States is a nation of continuous redemption that delivers us into the future.
When I emigrated to this country at the age of twenty, I made a covenant with America. It was forged on an aircraft bound to Atlanta. Before that wide-body A300 aircraft made its final touchdown in the city, something magical happened while I floated at thirty-two thousand feet above the ground. At some point during the initial descent, I closed my eyes and made a covenant with this new country I would call my permanent home. I promised that, in the name of the best within me, I would cultivate the noblest virtues in my character and use them as the only legitimate currency to purchase a life that would be worthy of an American. I made a covenant with my soon-to-be approaching country that in the name of the best and highest in me, I would seek faith in life’s better possibilities. That there would be no obstacles that my indefatigable spirit could not overcome, and that there would be no prejudice that a philosophy of individualism, which characterized the very essence of who I was at my core, could not transcend.
This covenant spoke to the stupendous achievements I vowed to accomplish by taking advantage of the plethora of opportunities that I knew would become available to me. Riding that majestic bird in the sky, I thought of my life in moral terms: this was a moral contract I was making with my new country. The best within me was a code of conduct that I would enact between myself and my future compatriots. It was an ethos of benevolence and goodwill that I would extend, and one that I expected to be reciprocated. The America I anticipated meeting, and the one I have come to know and love, is a country predicated on mutual exchange. If you show Americans respect, courtesy, and basic warmth, they will reciprocate.
President Biden, it was an innocent ethos such as that which I made as a young man, which makes America great. But America braked its acceleration to greatness when the proud upholders of its exceptional status were superseded by the haters.
We must fight with the radiant certainty of knowing that among all of God’s nations, ours is the First. We, the American people, are the other chosen people, appointed and destined to lead, inspire and reign supreme. We must colonize the world with our universal values, with that original assemblage of who we have made ourselves to be. We must gift to all Americans—indeed, to all humanity—the best within ourselves, the most heroic, the most exalted.
In the spirit of the late Queen Elizabeth II’s grandmother, Queen Mary, and her own sense of monarchy, let us strive to make an America where each can proudly say, America is God’s sacred mission to grace and dignify the earth; to give ordinary people an example of nobility and duty to raise them up, and to inspire them in their pained and striving lives. To live as a true American is to live out an ethical identity that is a vocational calling from God.
In the name of a return to Americanism let us bequeath to our children and to future generations an enduring and heroic legacy. That is the true MAGA Doctrine. Embrace it, Mr. President. It is your birthright.
Well and beautifully said. Thank you.
I 2nd that thought.
I’m glad he didn’t come here during the jug-eared Barry administration; otherwise he might have been deported like the Romeike family from Germany seeking asylum.
Unfortunately for the Romeikes, they had traits that B. Hussein & Eric Holder abhorred . . .
The Romeike family was in tact, legal entrants, intelligent, hard working, self sufficient, white, Christian, law abiding, homeschooling, and loved America.
(They even had two children born here – the celebrated “anchor babies”)
Barry & Eric, recoiling at the possibility of quality people coming here, spent piles of tax-dollars and endless appeals to make damned sure they never made a contribution to our soil.
Yes, Hill is a genuine American success story and exemplifies our constitutional values.
In this article I especially like his comparison of a constitutional republic, which codifies personal liberty, against theoretical democracy, which would deprive it from a huge amount of people. There are no democracies and never have been. Not even ancient Athens was a real democracy. People call democracy mob rule and tyranny of the minority for good reasons.
The Dirtbagocrat party and their fake news media love to to misname America’s form of government as a “democracy” because it reminds people of the party. An accurate description of the American republic would remind people of the Republican party, and they sure don’t want that. Most of them have been doing it so long or were indoctrinated so young that they actually believe America is a democracy. I generally expect lefties to be stupid but far too many conservatives have also been duped y this linguistic trick. Lefties want to be brainwashed but conservatives and especially Libertarians should know better.
I never knew what happened to the Romeike family. Did they get to stay here in the end, or were they finally deported as Barry and Eric wanted? And if they could be deported, anchor babies and all, why can’t some of the less desirable people who land here?
A colonization of the world with American political values wouldn’t be colonialism. There’s no such thing as cultural or political colonialism, no matter what the left-wing hate mongers claim. And “colonialism” is only a dirty word to leftists. For example, all of Britain’s former colonies are better off for it. The world would be a much better place if other countries had a Constitution the same as America’s.
At one time I thought it was possible for our values to be planted in other nations’ soils, but George W. Bush’s attempts to democratize Afghanistan and Iraq disabused me of that notion. As soon as we turned our backs they went right back to their tribal bickering, murdering of people with differing religious views (remember the Yazidi), and inhumanly cruel oppression of women. I now feel that our values cannot be accepted by some cultures unless we concurrently mount a military occupation.
I like a lot of what Hill says but “I am an American Supremacist. I believe in American Supremacy. America ought to rule and govern the lesser nations and states in the world. Many of them are like sinkholes, actually, which, like poor neighborhoods, drag down the regional value of where they are ensconced.
Nature abhors a vacuum. If we do not achieve a new Manifest Destiny and colonize the world with our political values, then some two-bit rotten and corrupt nations or a cabal of them will do it. The governments of China, Russia, and Iran immediately come to mind.” I believe like you Mr. Chcuo, Mr. Hill is promoting imperialism by way of “manifest destiny”. We have to take care of are own house first and lead by example not force. A Republic is better than a Democracy and benevolent dictators are hard to find!
“Colonize the world with our political values…” That’s where he lost me for good. Looks like another neocon manifesto in the style of Bush-Cheney. We should not be worrying about other countries when our own gets redder with every passing week. I don’t think that we as a nation will lose much if China gobbles up Taiwan or Russia gobbles up Ukraine. But if the communists who control the Democrat Party gobble up our country – and so far they have been pretty successful in doing this – we are all in big trouble. Our most serious threats are all internal, not external. And that’s what Republicans and other conservatives, tragically, fail to understand.
“Looks like another neocon manifesto in the style of Bush-Cheney.”
Except that Bush-Cheney would have never produced such absurdity today after the disaster of Afghanistan and Iraq is, or should be evident to all.
Thanks, Alex, for your kind words and support. It means a lot.
Jason Hill
Mr Hill, great article. If you don’t mind me asking, what country are you from and what type of immigration visa did you qualify for 20 years ago?
I also would like to point out that this country has many flaws when it comes to living up to our ideals of freedom and individual rights. Yes, the left is wrong, we are not systemically racist, we are the least racist country on the planet and capitalism is the only just economic system and we are the most capitalist country on earth. So no I’m not a leftist.
But let me point out our countries flaws. We have waged an endless and draconian war against the consensual crime of illicit drugs. Handing down life ruining sentences for consensual crimes. Something that should not happen in the land of the free. We allow the police to seize suspects property (civil asset forfeiture) without due process under the guise of fighting this tyrannical and authoritarian drug war. Many innocents get their property confiscated on a mere hunch that their money may have been acquired illegally. That needs to end yesterday before we call our country great. Extensive use of solitary confinement in our prisons amounts to torture. Great and free nations don’t torture their citizens. We have the harshest criminal penalties in the free world. We hand down more ‘life without parole’ sentences per capita than any member of the free world. I get that criminal justice is a proper function of government, but I’m not sure the land of the free should have such a harsh penal system.
I would value your opinion should you take the time to respond.
To suggest drug taking is done by consenting adults freely is naive at best. The vast majority of drug abuse is a result of the exploitation of children.
Drugs are effectively legal in the U.K. and as a result our cities are now shit holes and many towns are catching up.
Money laundering criminal activities are another consequence,
Things are different here. The abuse of hard drugs is primarily an adult pathology, if for no other reason than adults legally have more free will. And it’s very small minority of the population who abuse meth, heroin, Fentanyl or whichever.
With those drugs flooding into the country through our nonexistent borders and the prices dropping as a result, there will be a good deal more addiction and death coming in the future.
To suggest drug taking is done by consenting adults freely is naive at best. The vast majority of drug abuse is a result of the exploitation of children.
Drugs are effectively legal in the U.K. and as a result our cities are now shite holes and many towns are catching up.
Money laundering criminal activities are another consequence,
I know he’s from Jamaica. But it would be interesting to find out what kind of visa allowed him to move here.
Why?
The best needs the best. Well done!
That was beautifully said. I will be sharing this with everyone. I do wish it would have a profound affect on Joe Biden but I think all those words were for naught.
Alzheimer Joe couldn’t understand a nursery rhyme. All he understands are dollar symbols, $$$$, even though he can’t do arithmetic any more.
Thanks Prof. Hill, nice article. I like your style of writing, which is somewhat different than others.
We have to restore our Republic. It’s core values, individual rights, have been eroded. The fight has to be at home before we can inspire the world. Make America free again! When that happens she will be great again.
Impressive’. Encapsulates how I’ve always seen our country, the conservative or MAGA wave Donald Trump rode in and the current threats to its existence.. Biden’s speech was a clarification of who we are dealing with.’ With clear thinkers on our side like you Professor, we’ve got a great chance of restoring our Republics legacy.
Continued strength to you, Jason. I loved your book, and can only imagine the ration that is thrown at you, every day. I would have wilted.
I am simply (and for the duration) an admirer of the system of governance and relationship of government to the citizen set up roughly 250 years ago, in the city of Philadelphia in an atmosphere of intense argument and debate.
And yes we are a representative republic where the power and authority of the federal government rests with the people (the consent of the governed), a simple fact that is intentionally not taught in American public schools anymore.
I would never call myself an American Supremacist nor would I advocate for said system to “colonize” the world.
Joe Biden is a lifelong political animal and a not very smart one. The day following his anti MAGA speech in Philadelphia, he repudiated himself telling a reporter:
“I don’t consider any Trump supporter to be a threat to the country.”
Crazy stuff.
Please name a democratic country, now or ever. You have proclaimed a definition both of democracy and republic, but i think both are yours, and far from agreed upon. Everyone understands that a “pure democracy”—something that has never existed, unless you can cite one?—contains a contradiction: if the majority votes to ban, say, the rights of the minority, or *a* minority, to vote or *live*, we have an obvious contradicition, we have NAZI Germany. NAZI Germany was not elected by a democracy, that i understood by all thinking people to be a contradiction in terms and certainly *intent*.Tthat is why in modern parlance the term “democracy” has always been used to mean not only a country that uses the device of voting but that protects certain individual rights regardless of the vote. A democracy agrees that the fundamental rights of the individual—as prescribed, for example, in our Bill of Rights (by men, not “God”” IMO)—can not be overturned. That s why every POTUS, except one, in the post WW era has rightly referred to America as a “democracy” (among other things), to America, one of the free countries of the world, as among the *democracies* of the world. So, I wonder why the resistance to calling America a “democracy”? Your premise that democracy allows the majority to simply overturn the rights of others is wrong, it is simply not so, not in any “democratic” countries of today. If I am wrong, name one. Hungary perhaps, but precisely in insofar as it denies the rights of the individual with its “illiberal democracy”. In fact, the nominally described democracies of the world are indisputably the freest countries of the world, the ones that most protect the human, civil and political rights of their citizens. They are all, for the most part—and thank God—our allies. so why not call America a democracy among the free democracies of the world? Sure, it is not a “pure democracy”—such a thing can not exist, hasn’t ever existed and is a unicorn—but it emphatically *is* a democracy. As I explained earlier, that internal contradiction has been corrected for, however imperfectly (I hope we both agree there are no *perfect* forms of gov’t), by, in the case of America, the Bill of Rights. The liberal democracies of the world all hew to a close consensus as to what the fundamental rights of the individual are and make them inviolable; nothing, certainly not a majority vote can negate them. This demand for inalienable rights (See our Bill of Rights) is *part* of what a democracy is in modern parlance. That was always understood. I am very suspicious of this recent contempt for democracy and this effort from the rightists in America to say “we are not a democracy”. Yes, we damn well are a democracy! I think what saying America is not a democracy is really about, is a promotion of nationalism and “illiberal democracy” a la Victor Orban. It is just an excuse for “strongman” rule, repression of one’s “enemies’,; enemy being—inextricably— *anyone* who criticizes the “strongman ” and his gov’t; see: Orban, Putin, Erdogan, Mohamed bin Salmon, Duterte, Xi Jing Ping, Kim Jong Un, the man Trump said he “fell in love with” and hoped the American people would emulate by standing up straight just like the North Koreans did, wheneer he entered the room, or any other of the “strongmen” Trump so admires. Again, if America is not a democracy, name ONE democracy in the world today so we can understand. I describe America thus: a democratic, representative constitutional republic, truly and accurately. Let liberty and justice for all ring.
As a political science major at Berzerk-ley many decades ago, it was hammered into my head that the United States is decidedly NOT a “direct democracy”, for which the prototype was Greece… “Ancient Greece was a Direct Democracy. Meaning any free man could speak in an assembly, vote on a new law, propose to go to war or run the city’s any to day business.”
Which is how Ben Franklin answered the woman’s question (“What do we have, a republic or a monarchy?’)as he emerged from the constitutional convention:
Franklin replied, ‘A republic, if you can keep it.’
We’re currently barraged with democrat leaders saying how they’re “protecting democracy from the horrors of MAGA style republicans”, which, is nothing more than an ignorant and emotional appeal to their ignorant and emotional base.
Words words words. I’m simply All In for a country where the federal government performs its ONLY legitimate tasks: Protection from foreign threats and an atmosphere where free citizens are able to pursue their own version of “happiness”.
Given that Jabba the Hutt government has infused itself into everything, that feels something like a pipe dream.
If you like many Americans say today’s Ukraine is a Democracy and we must support it because it is a Democracy, you my friend are delusional. Ukraine is no more a Democracy than NAZI Germany was a Democracy It is just a way the industrial/military complex like to sell Americans into believing economic imperialism is really Democracy and that is a good thing and must be protected.
“I am very suspicious of this recent contempt for democracy and this effort from the rightists in America to say “we are not a democracy”.
You’re assuming that the corruption, confusion, obfuscation, the conceptual shell game, of the concept of what the Founding Fathers intended America to be began recently with the Right wing?
What if it was the Leftists over a hundred years ago in our public (government) schools that intentionally began the obfuscation and confusion between a Democracy and a Constitutional Republic? The more confused and ignorant the citizens are, the easier it is to lead the ignorant sheep to the slaughter. It has always been predominantly and overwhelmingly the Leftist intellectuals who have introduced conceptual confusion into the language (Newspeak) in order to make the general populace stupid and ignorant, confused and therefore docile, and easily lead to dictatorship.
Want to obliterate the concept of individualism in a person’s mind? Introduce the anti-concept of “anti-racism”. From then on the person is conceptually crippled. He no longer can think objectively and precisely. Without precise concepts a person can not think objectively. So if you now ask this person “How do we solve the problem of racism?”, he can’t say “INDIVIDUALISM, we treat every person as an individual”. He no longer has the concept of individualism in his mind. Instead he’ll say “Become an anti-racist”. But anti-racism leads him back to racial collectivism, racial quotas and such. His mind is now on a conceptual tread mill to the same end, it’s impotent to think objectively, precisely, you’ve torn the eyes out of his mind.
Want to obliterate the concept of a Constitutional Republic? Introduce the Leftist anti-concept of a Constitutional Democracy. Introduce an oxymoron and you make the person a moron. You obliterate the real concept and it’s real definition.
“No mind is better than the precision of its concepts….
The purpose of “anti-concepts” is to obliterate certain concepts without public discussion; and, as a means to that end, to make public discussion unintelligible, and to induce the same disintegration in the mind of any man who accepts them, rendering him incapable of clear thinking or rational judgment.” – Ayn Rand
The best examples of pure democracy existed in ancient Athens and Rome. Democracy made a mess of those polities, and it took a long time to clean up that mess. Often as not the result was despotism.
Sorry for the unedited comment above; I’ll try to be more careful in the future, but once you press “send” the regrets come.
“… in the name of the best within me …”
Thrilling words, describing a profound experience in a young person’s life.
I had a similarly profound experience on an international flight bound for LAX, forty years ago.
“There is no majority that can ever arbitrarily deprive the individual of his property, his due process, and his natural, God-given rights.”
Natural God-given rights? If rights are natural and YOUR God is super-natural (as he logically must be to create the natural) how can we prove that your super-natural God exists and that he created the NATURAL? If we can not prove and validate the concept of natural rights on a natural, demonstrable, foundation then we can not prove and validate rights, period.
As a matter of natural fact and natural logic if unalienable natural rights are GIVEN to man by any entity, human or divine, natural or supernatural, then they are not unalienable rights but favors, whims, special privileges, granted or denied by that divine, supernatural, entity or his natural representative in the natural world. If man is the creation of Yahweh or Allah then he is forever the property of Yahweh or Allah and can never be free or have unalienable, natural, rights. He remains the property of God forever and the purpose of his life is to be the humble servant of Yahweh or Allah, forever. A humble servant is never free to pursue his life, his liberty, and his personal pursuit of happiness.
Either rights are natural and demonstrable because they are inherent in the natural nature of man or they’re not.
“Although the notion that rights come from God served to establish America, it has not served and cannot serve to sustain America. This is because no matter how many people believe that rights come from God, there is no evidence for such a being, much less evidence that rights somehow emanate from his will.” – Objectivist philosopher Craig Biddle
“One cannot be a settler on one’s indigenous lands. One can only be a heroic and noble pioneer.”
By this argument the Aztecs, Incas, Comanche, and Cherokee were heroic and noble pioneers and the Spaniards and Englishmen were not. There is no such thing in reality as one’s indigenous land if by indigenous land you mean tribal, ethnic, racial, religious, or collectivist land. In reality only individuals exist, in reality private property rights to land rest upon the foundation of individual rights to land. The rational, moral, legitimacy of modern Israel does not rest upon some ancient, mystical, supernatural, tribal, indigenous, book of mythology. It rests upon the fact that modern Israel is a country that essentially respects and defends the Natural Rights of Man, the natural rights of the individual.
“The source of man’s rights is not divine law or congressional law, but the law of identity. A is A—and Man is Man. Rights are conditions of existence required by man’s nature for his proper survival. If man is to live on earth, it is right for him to use his mind, it is right to act on his own free judgment, it is right to work for his values and to keep the product of his work. If life on earth is his purpose, he has a right to live as a rational being: nature forbids him the irrational. Any group, any gang, any nation that attempts to negate man’s rights, is wrong, which means: is evil, which means: is anti-life….
Man holds these rights, not from the Collective nor for the Collective, but against the Collective—as a barrier which the Collective cannot cross; . . . these rights are man’s protection against all other men…. A group, as such, has no rights. A man can neither acquire new rights by joining a group nor lose the rights which he does possess. The principle of individual rights is the only moral base of all groups or associations.” – Ayn Rand
“We must fight with the radiant certainty of knowing that among all of God’s nations, ours is the First. We, the American people, are the other chosen people, appointed and destined to lead, inspire and reign supreme.
America is God’s sacred mission to grace and dignify the earth; to give ordinary people an example of nobility and duty to raise them up, and to inspire them in their pained and striving lives. To live as a true American is to live out an ethical identity that is a vocational calling from God.”
There are no divinely “Chosen People”. That mystical, supernatural, none-sense has been the rationalization for many of mankind’s greatest atrocities including Hitler and the Nazis who viewed themselves as a mystically chosen Aryan Race. The Shinto Japanese of WW2 who saw themselves as having a mystical “Manifest Destiny” to conquer the world. The Muslims who view themselves as a “Chosen People” with a divine, mystical, supernatural “Manifest Destiny”. The Aztecs and the Incas viewed themselves as a divinely “Chosen People” and proceeded to conquer, sacrifice, and cannibalize the other tribes surrounding them.
As freedom and liberty loving American individuals we are not a divinely “Chosen People” and we should not view ourselves as such. We are free individuals, pursuing our individual, personal happiness in America. Minding our own business so long as other countries mind theirs. We have no duty to save or rescue other countries through altruistic self-sacrifice. We have no duty to build other nations. We should not be isolationists and we should not be altruistic self-sacrificers. We should be selfish patriots. Selfishly defending America and rational American interests for our won good and benefit. Rational self-preservation should be our first moral responsibility — not as a selfless duty to others, but as a selfish responsibility to ourselves.
Our guiding foreign policy principle should be “America first, if other countries want to save and rescue themselves they can emulate America and adopt our Bill of Rights to their Constitution, if not they can go to hell, so long as they do not interfere with or threaten our rational American interests.”
“Dictatorship nations are outlaws. Any free nation had the right to invade Nazi Germany and, today, has the right to invade Soviet Russia, Cuba or any other slave pen. Whether a free nation chooses to do so or not is a matter of its own self-interest, not of respect for the non-existent “rights” of gang rulers. It is not a free nation’s duty to liberate other nations at the price of self-sacrifice, but a free nation has the right to do it, when and if it so chooses.” – Ayn Rand
I am “endowed by my Creator” with a God given “natural right” to inform you (once again) that you are a tedious and repetitive windbag.
I thank God everyday that I will not end up in your “Objectivist Reason Uber Alles” slave pen.
“… in the name of the best within me …”
Thrilling and instantly recognizable words, describing a profound experience in a young person’s life.
I had a similarly profound experience on an international flight bound for LAX, forty years ago.
That is one of the most beautiful things I’ve read in a long time. Your words are an oasis in a desert.
Thanks, so very much Kevin
“We must colonize the world with our universal values, with that original assemblage of who we have made ourselves to be.”
As is true of religions, systems of government are culture specific.
As the past 20+ years have amply demonstrated, tribal societies like Iraq and Afghanistan. are not particularly amenable to so called “democratic principles of governance”.
Since democrats have made identity politics their centerpiece, much of America itself seems to want to revert back to tribal relationships.
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“If we do not achieve a new Manifest Destiny and colonize the world with our political values, then some two-bit rotten and corrupt nations or a cabal of them will do it. The governments of China, Russia, and Iran immediately come to mind.”
Hmmm,..so may be we should start with colonising the two-bit rotten and corrupt nations first. The governments of China, Russia, and Iran immediately come to mind. 🙂
But seriously now, Mr. Hill…you can’t be serious.
“so may be we should start with colonising the two-bit rotten and corrupt nations first. The governments of China, Russia, and Iran immediately come to mind.”
In case you haven’t noticed, it has already started. There is a great worldwide movement of ideas and thought. This movement of ideas and thought has always existed, and what comes from the America of the Founding Fathers has already won over many people around the world. Haven’t you noticed all these people who for 200 years want to settle in the United States?
“But seriously now, Mr. Hill…you can’t be serious.”
We are very serious : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWQluSY36FQ
Statue of Liberty Poem : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4wYFs5F76E
Singin’ in the Rain – Gene Kelly : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swloMVFALXw
“you can’t be serious.”
You can’t imagine how serious we are. It’s beyond human understanding.
Didn’t you notice that there was something in this article that was beyond human understanding?
Vangelis – Chariots Of Fire : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a-HfNE3EIo
???
What the heck is “Rocky Blaboa”? And and why what seems like the back of a window washer plus the bombastic music should convince anybody of your seriousness?
In case you haven’t noticed, I am being ironic suggesting a strategy as absurd as the “colonization of the world with our political values.”
May the case of Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria and closer to the US, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti disabuse the US of the silly idea expressed – quite frivolously – by Mr. Hill.
As for America’s of the Founding fathers’ – undeniably enlightened – ideas – they have its roots in Europe (where they originated) and were applied in various tempo and degree of perfection especially in the UK, France and generally Northern part of Europe.
I would never deny the attraction of America, but historically the great majority of immigrants regarded America’s assurance of material reward much more important than its political system – the appreciation of which had to wait for the second or third generation to appear. If ever.
Ironically, the colonization of Mexico with the American political values resulted not so much in Mexico embracing those values, but with Mexico colonizing California and subsequent devaluation of American values, which have now to compete with the Mexican ones and slowly, but surely losing.
I think Victor Hanson’s book “Mexifornia” describes the process of de-Americanisation of California and its future very realistically.
The colonizer got colonized. Some colonization!
Biden and his ilk need power and want more. They are propped up by the Ignorant-American who panics if the government does not react to any and every situation.
Thank you, Professor, for that invigorating, uplifting letter. It’s almost impossible to believe that Biden was a senator for 40 years and missed the boat on what this nation really is. He had completed his trip to the dark side.
Sadly, I’m thinking either Biden won’t receive it (screened out by the Secret Service, or Team Garland or whomever screens his incoming correspondence. Or he’ll fall asleep while reading it. I’m sure it won’t penetrate his lust for power and hatred of people like us.
Well, Dr. Hill, you used a couple of dog whistles that show you to be influenced by (gasp!) Ayn Rand. “The smallest minority is the individual” and “the best that is within us” come from her writings as I am sure you are aware. It’s okay; you aren’t a mindless minion like our friend THX here as it is obvious from your writing that you have a great many ideas of your own, but I couldn’t resist a joking dig.
This article, for all its florid use of language, is one of luminous beauty and profound importance. I wish it could be read by the people who actually run this country and the world, but they will never see it. And if they do they are too arrogant to understand it.
A great many ideas from YOUR mindless Bible?
“We rarely think people have good sense unless they agree with us.” ― Francois de La Rochefoucauld
I don’t know what Jason Hill’s confused agenda is but surely as a professional philosopher he understands that Judaism, Christianity, and Objectivism are incompatible.