A number of articles about the Boston terrorist attack that I have read recently reminded me that what is either kept out of the media or otherwise hidden is often more important than what actually appears. One was a feature article entitled “Ron Paul Slams Boston Police. Has he Gone too Far?” by Peter Grier of the normally sensible Christian Science Monitor. The remainder were also related to the Boston Marathon, a discussion in various places in the media of the possibility that the United States will take steps to make it easier for the intelligence services and law enforcement to read emails and social media entries in “real time” to be able to forestall home grown terrorists. Making such access easier means eliminating those few restrictions that currently exist to protect personal privacy and prevent unlawful searches.

I think it is fair to say that the mainstream media, frequently owned by large corporations, operates in its own bubble on a consensus basis when it reports the news. Further, each media outlet has a system of political monitors who control what is allowed to appear and who determine what is unacceptable, frequently on a highly subjective basis. If a journalist thinks a story is worth reporting he still has to run the gamut of the politics involved in getting something in print or on television. While such politicking exists even in the alternative media, it is much more in evidence for the newspapers and broadcasts that are dependent on sponsors to turn a profit as they are always conscious of the need not to offend anyone. Powerful sponsors mean that stories that might be viewed as objectionable rarely make the cut. That means that independent analysis of news stories is pretty much confined to internet outlets that tend to live and die based on meager diet of voluntary contributions, which also means that the only independent voices tend to be resource poor and unable to do the type of investigative reporting that would be required to have a story break through and receive national attention.

Since most Americans get their news – what there is of it – from the mainstream, it means that citizens are poorly informed on most issues unless they make an independent effort to discover the story behind the story. Which brings us to media reporting on Ron Paul. Paul accused the government of illegally engaging in a military style occupation of an American city in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing. Searches were conducted without warrants, armored vehicles patrolled streets emptied in response to a lockdown mandated by the civil authorities, and drones patrolled the skies. And to top it all, the tactics did not catch the fugitive suspects, one of whom was killed in a shoot-out following a carjacking, while the younger brother, hiding in a boat located outside the lockdown zone, was discovered by an alert citizen. The article notes that “…Paul’s contrarian take perhaps should not be surprising,” before lambasting him for his libertarian leanings. Grier observes, somewhat irrelevantly, that the “Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity has an advisory board that contains a ‘bevy of conspiracy theorists, cranks, and apologists for some of the worst regimes on the planet,’ according to Daily Beast writer James Kirchik,” but does not note that Kirchik is a leading neocon who is associated with Bill Kristol’s Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

To his credit, Grier does also quote Glenn Greenwald, who told Bill Moyers on PBS that “The way in which Americans now relate to their government, the way in which they get nationalistic pride is through the assertion of this massive military or police force, and very few other things produce that kind of pride.” But he does not really accept that Paul is, of course, right. The lockdown of Boston, the searches, and the militarization of what was essentially a response to a criminal act were all completely illegal and extralegal plus unconstitutional. The average reader, however, would note the “Has he gone too far?” in the headline and would, without reading much further, begin to mutter about the “crazy uncle” being at it again. The article is designed to give the impression that anyone who questions a massive police and military response to a criminal act is somehow off center and can safely be ignored, whereas the contrary is true and every American should be questioning the outsized response to the bombing.

The bombing spawned new demands to curtail civil liberties to enable the police and intelligence agencies to do their job more effectively. No matter that the U.S. authorities already had warnings that they did not heed or properly disseminate, a repeat of the mistakes of 2001 and a clear indication that the trillions of dollars spent on security since 9/11 has been a waste of money. The FBI is instead suggesting that just a bit more intrusion into private communications is the real problem and are basing their argument at least in part on the Tsarnaev brothers’ use of Twitter and YouTube. One police source notes how Boston has shifted the ground on guilt and innocence, saying that comments on social media will be prima facie evidence of criminal intent, “If you’re not a terrorist, if you’re not a real threat, prove it,” adding unintentionally though somewhat ironically, “This is the price you pay to live in free society right now. It’s just the way it is.”

The head of the Bureau Robert Mueller is asking for still more resources and relaxed legal guidelines to enable the authorities to monitor social networks and other internet traffic in real time. He calls it the Next Generation Cyber Initiative. The FBI’s request for added powers is being supported by the usual suspects in congress and reportedly also by the “change we can believe in” Obama Administration. If you are thinking that there is a secondary agenda in all the posturing, which is to enable and empower the federal government to finally move to its plan for “total information awareness” on every citizen and legal resident, a program initially floated by the Pentagon back in 2002, you would certainly be correct. But no one in the government is admitting that.

Mueller’s complaint is that some social media providers actually have impediments built into their operating systems to prevent snooping. That is why they incorporate passwords and software that impedes hacking. Most users of the systems would refer to it as “privacy.” The federal government wants to have the power to compel the providers – which would include Google and Facebook – to incorporate new features referred to as backdoor technologies that will enable the FBI and NSA to snoop at will, which is already a power they have over phone systems based on the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994. If they companies do not comply, they can be subject to fines that will start at $25,000 per day. Foreign based communications providers will also be subject to the same rules, opening the door for countries like Iran, China, Russia and Saudi Arabia to exercise reciprocity against U.S. companies and turning internet access into a political football.

Now one might well think that in a constitutional republic like the United States there would be judicial hurdles in place to inhibit law enforcement and intelligence agencies from obtaining private information in what many might consider illegal searches. But consider for a moment what the government already can do. It was recently revealed that it can and does record and store all digital communications in the United States. That means all phone calls, emails, and online chats, totaling 1.7 billion items per day adding to a data base of more than 20 trillion items relating to U.S. citizens. A considerable portion of that haul is then screened by computer for words or expressions that might denote terrorist or criminal activity, but most of it just goes into a computer data bank for possible later use.

The sole judicial filter on FBI surveillance is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or FISC, which reviewed 1,856 requests from the government in 2012 and approved every one. The court is a board of judges which only hears the government side of the argument as the target of the surveillance has no idea that he is being scrutinized. The government case is inevitably framed around national security. And the FBI also has considerable latitude to investigate outside the purview of the FISC. It uses administratively issued National Security Letters (NSLs), a feature of the Patriot Act, to demand information from companies and public institutions. More than 15,000 NSLs were issued last year on more than 6,000 American citizens. An estimated 25,000 more NSLs were issued on non-U.S. persons. The NSLs require no judicial review and they do not allow the source of the information to reveal the FBI approach to the person or group being targeted. This latter feature of the NSL is currently being challenged in court, with one judge ruling the practice unconstitutional.

So the fallout from Boston has been more of the same lashing out that we saw post 9/11. People like Ron Paul who decry the breakdown in the constitution and rule of law are lambasted for being out of touch and “going too far” while the “liberal” Obama Administration prepares to give the FBI sweeping new powers. Unfortunately power is a zero sum game. If you take away rights and liberties they are not safe somewhere waiting to be restored, they are gone forever and have been transferred to someone else. If we establish the principle that any criminal act inflicting multiple casualties can be defined as terrorism and be treated by the imposition of martial law we will quickly lose constitutionally guaranteed access to some aspects of civilian rule of law. If we decide that no conversation or message, even if it originates in one’s home, is truly private then we will have lost a large measure of our personal liberty. And it can even get worse. There is speculation that the Obama Administration will use the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as a model for another secret federal court that can decide on the use of drones to assassinate American citizens. As FISC rules 100% in favor of the government, we can only expect rubberstamp kill lists as part of our future.

Reprinted by permission of Antiwar.com.

What really drives American foreign policy…is a post-Cold War determination on the part of the United States to dominate the Middle East, to play a hegemonic role in the Middle East,  to micromanage political outcomes in key Middle Eastern states so that those states’ strategic orientation is subordinated to U.S. foreign policy preferences and the Middle East has a regional order which is essentially run by the United States.

When you look at the situation in Syria, it’s obvious that many innocent people have been killed, and that is a profound tragedy.  But I think that the narrative in the West — that this was basically a peaceful protest by Syrians that was responded to brutally, and these people took all of this violence until a year later, eighteen months later, they had to start responding violently — I don’t think that’s really the way things played out. Outside powers — the Saudis, others — were pouring money and weapons into Syria from a very early point.

The agenda was not to bring democracy to Syrians.  I don’t think the Saudis care about that; frankly, I don’t think the United States cares all that much about that.  The agenda was to topple Assad as a way of hurting Iran’s regional position.  70,000 dead Syrians later, this project has not worked. Now countries like the United States face a choice.  They can either accept that this project of toppling Assad to hurt Iran has failed, and they can get serious about a diplomatic process that might produce a political settlement and end violence.  Or if they keep doing this, if they keep supporting the opposition, we’re going to be looking at literally years of continued violence, and who knows how many more tens of thousands of dead Syrians.

That is the choice. For as long as opposition groups have outside supporters like the Saudis, like the United States, who are in a sense egging them on, they have absolutely no incentive to face political reality and enter some kind of negotiating process…They don’t have an interest in doing that because there are outsiders who will help them keep the violence rolling along indefinitely.

As far as the United States doing what ‘was necessary’ early on, there is this small matter of sovereignty, there’s this small matter of international law that says you only get to use force when the Security Council authorizes it or under a fairly narrow interpretation of self-defense in the UN Charter.  The United States has no right—it may have a hegemonic prerogative (or think it does), but it has no right—to impose no-fly zones over sovereign states to get rid of a leader that it doesn’t like…

Find one case in which the United States applied military force, ostensibly for the protection of civilian populations, in which part of its agenda was not also regime change in that country.  If you look at the Balkans, if you look at Iraq, if you look at what we did in Libya, if you look at what we say we want to do in Syria—in every one of those cases, the argument for humanitarian intervention is inextricably bound up with the argument for coercive regime change.  Frankly, I think Russia and China are eminently justified in saying that they’re not going to enable that.

Read the entire piece here.

Congressional hearings, White House damage control, endless op-eds, accusations, and defensive denials. Controversy over the events in Benghazi last September took center stage in Washington and elsewhere last week. However, the whole discussion is again more of a sideshow. Each side seeks to score political points instead of asking the real questions about the attack on the US facility, which resulted in the death of US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Republicans smell a political opportunity over evidence that the Administration heavily edited initial intelligence community talking points about the attack to remove or soften anything that might reflect badly on the president or the State Department.

Are we are supposed to be shocked by such behavior? Are we supposed to forget that this kind of whitewashing of facts is standard operating procedure when it comes to the US government?

Democrats in Congress have offered the even less convincing explanation for Benghazi, that somehow the attack occurred due to Republican sponsored cuts in the security budget at facilities overseas. With a one trillion dollar military budget, it is hard to take this seriously.

It appears that the Administration scrubbed initial intelligence reports of references to extremist Islamist involvement in the attacks, preferring to craft a lie that the demonstrations were a spontaneous response to an anti-Islamic video that developed into a full-out attack on the US outpost.

Who can blame the administration for wanting to shift the focus? The Islamic radicals who attacked Benghazi were the same people let loose by the US-led attack on Libya. They were the rebels on whose behalf the US overthrew the Libyan government. Ambassador Stevens was slain by the same Islamic radicals he personally assisted just over one year earlier.

But the Republicans in Congress also want to shift the blame. They supported the Obama Administration’s policy of bombing Libya and overthrowing its government. They also repeated the same manufactured claims that Gaddafi was “killing his own people” and was about to commit mass genocide if he were not stopped. Republicans want to draw attention to the President’s editing talking points in hopes no one will notice that if the attack on Libya they supported had not taken place, Ambassador Stevens would be alive today.

Neither side wants to talk about the real lesson of Benghazi: interventionism always carries with it unintended consequences. The US attack on Libya led to the unleashing of Islamist radicals in Libya. These radicals have destroyed the country, murdered thousands, and killed the US ambassador. Some of these then turned their attention to Mali which required another intervention by the US and France.

Previously secure weapons in Libya flooded the region after the US attack, with many of them going to Islamist radicals who make up the majority of those fighting to overthrow the government in Syria. The US government has intervened in the Syrian conflict on behalf of the same rebels it assisted in the Libya conflict, likely helping with the weapons transfers. With word out that these rebels are mostly affiliated with al Qaeda, the US is now intervening to persuade some factions of the Syrian rebels to kill other factions before completing the task of ousting the Syrian government. It is the dizzying cycle of interventionism.

The real lesson of Benghazi will not be learned because neither Republicans nor Democrats want to hear it. But it is our interventionist foreign policy and its unintended consequences that have created these problems, including the attack and murder of Ambassador Stevens. The disputed talking points and White House whitewashing are just a sideshow.

The controversy over Iran’s nuclear activities has at least as much to do with the future of international order as it does with nonproliferation.  For this reason, all of the BRICS have much at stake in how the Iranian nuclear issue is handled. 

Conflict over Iran’s nuclear program is driven by two different approaches to interpreting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT); these approaches, in turn, are rooted in different conceptions of international order.  Which interpretation of the NPT ultimately prevails on the Iranian nuclear issue will go a long way to determine whether a rules-based view of international order gains ascendancy over a policy-oriented approach in which the goals of international policy are defined mainly by America and its partners.  And that will go a long way to determine whether rising non-Western states emerge as true power centers in a multipolar world, or whether they continue, in important ways, to be subordinated to hegemonic preferences of the West—and especially the United States. 

The NPT is appropriately understood as a set of three bargains among signatories:  non-weapons states commit not to obtain nuclear weapons; countries recognized as weapons states (America, Russia, Britain, France, and China) commit to nuclear disarmament; and all parties agree that signatories have an “inalienable right” to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.  One approach to interpreting the NPT gives these bargains equal standing; the other holds that the goal of nonproliferation trumps the other two.    

There have long been strains between weapons states and non-weapons states over nuclear powers’ poor compliance with their commitment to disarm.  Today, though, disputes about NPT interpretation are particularly acute over perceived tensions between blocking nuclear proliferation and enabling peaceful use of nuclear technology.  This is especially so for fuel cycle technology, the ultimate “dual use” capability—for the same material that fuels power, medical, and research reactors can, at higher levels of fissile isotope concentration, be used in nuclear bombs.  The dispute is engaged most immediately over whether Iran, as a non-weapons party to the NPT, has a right to enrich uranium under international safeguards. 

For those holding that the NPT’s three bargains have equal standing, Tehran’s right to enrich is clear—from the NPT itself, its negotiating history, and decades of state practice, with at least a dozen states having developed safeguarded fuel cycle infrastructures potentially able to support a weapons program.  On this basis, the diplomatic solution is also clear:  Western recognition of Iran’s nuclear rights in return for greater transparency through more intrusive verification and monitoring. 

Those recognizing Iran’s nuclear rights take what international lawyers call a “positivist” view of global order, whereby the rules of international relations are created through the consent of independent sovereign states and are to be interpreted narrowly.  Such a rules-based approach is strongly favored by non-Western states, including BRICS—for it is the only way international rules might constrain established powers as well as rising powers and the less powerful.    

Those who believe nonproliferation trumps the NPT’s other goals claim that there is no treaty-based “right” to enrich, and that weapons states and others with nuclear industries should decide which non-weapons states can possess fuel cycle technologies.  From these premises, the George W. Bush administration sought a worldwide ban on transferring fuel cycle technologies to countries not already possessing them.  Since this effort failed, Washington has pushed the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group to make such transfers conditional on recipients’ acceptance of the Additional Protocol to the NPT—an instrument devised at U.S. instigation in the 1990s to enable more intrusive and proactive inspections in non-weapons states. 

America has pressed the UN Security Council to adopt resolutions telling Tehran to suspend enrichment, even though it is part of Iran’s “inalienable right” to peaceful use of nuclear technology; such resolutions violate UN Charter provisions that the Council act “in accordance with the purposes and principles of the United Nations” and “with the present charter.”  The Obama administration has also defined its preferred diplomatic outcome and, with Britain and France, imposed it on the P5+1:  Iran must promptly stop enriching at the near-20 percent level to fuel its sole (and safeguarded) research reactor; it must then comply with Security Council calls to cease all enrichment.  U.S. officials say Iran might be “allowed” a circumscribed enrichment program, after suspending for a decade or more, but London and Paris insist that “zero enrichment” is the only acceptable long-term outcome.                 

Those asserting that Iran has no right to enrich—America, Britain, France, and Israel—take a policy- or results-oriented view of international order.  In this view, what matters in responding to international challenges are the goals motivating states to create particular rules in the first place—not the rules themselves, but the goals underlying them.  This approach also ascribes a special role in interpreting rules to the most powerful states—those with the resources and willingness to act in order to enforce the rules.  Unsurprisingly, this approach is favored by established Western powers—above all, by the United States.          

All of the BRICS have, in various ways, pushed back against a de facto unilateral rewriting of the NPT by America and its European partners.  Since abandoning nuclear weapons programs during democratization and joining the NPT, Brazil and South Africa have staunchly defended non-weapons states’ right to peaceful use of nuclear technology, including enrichment.  With Argentina, they resisted U.S. efforts to make transfers of fuel cycle technology contingent on accepting the Additional Protocol (which Brazil has refused to sign), ultimately forcing Washington to compromise.  With Turkey, Brazil brokered the Tehran Declaration in May 2010, whereby Iran accepted U.S. terms that it swap most of its then stockpile of enriched uranium for new fuel for its research reactor.  But the Declaration openly recognized Iran’s right to enrich; for this reason, the Obama administration rejected it. 

The recently concluded 5th BRICS Summit in Durban saw a joint declaration that referred to the official BRICS position on Iran:  “We believe there is no alternative to a negotiated solution to the Iranian nuclear issue.  We recognize Iran’s right to peaceful uses of nuclear energy consistent with its international obligations, and support resolution of the issues involved through political and diplomatic means and dialogue.”

At the same time, the BRICS have all, to varying degrees, accommodated Washington on the Iranian issue.  Russian and Chinese officials acknowledge there will be no diplomatic solution absent Western recognition of Tehran’s nuclear rights.  Yet China and Russia endorsed all six Security Council resolutions requiring Iran to suspend enrichment.  Beijing and Moscow did so partly to keep America in the Council with the issue, where they can exert ongoing influence—and restraint—over Washington; at their insistence, the resolutions state explicitly that none of them can be construed as authorizing the use of force against Iran.  Still, they acquiesced to resolutions that make a diplomatic settlement harder and that contradict a truly rules-based model of international order.

Russia, China, and the other BRICS have also accommodated Washington’s increasing reliance on the threatened imposition of “secondary” sanctions against third-country entities doing business with the Islamic Republic.  Such measures violate U.S. commitments under the World Trade Organization, which allows members to cut trade with states they deem national security threats but not to sanction other members over lawful business with third countries.  If challenged on this in the WTO’s Dispute Resolution Mechanism, America would surely lose; for this reason, U.S. administrations have been reluctant actually to impose secondary sanctions on non-U.S. entities transacting with Iran.  Nevertheless, companies, banks, and even governments in all of the BRICS have cut back on their Iranian transactions—feeding American elites’ sense that, notwithstanding their illegality, secondary sanctions help leverage non-Western states’ compliance with Washington’s policy preferences and vision of (U.S.-dominated) world order. 

If the BRICS want to move decisively from a still relatively unipolar world to a genuinely multipolar world, they will, at some point, have to call Washington’s bluff on Iran-related secondary sanctions.  They will also have to accelerate the development of alternatives to US-dominated mechanisms for conducting and settling international transactions—a project to which the proposed new BRICS bank could contribute significantly.  Finally, they will need to be more willing to oppose, openly, America’s efforts to unilaterally rewrite international law and hijack international institutions for its own hegemonic purposes.  By doing so, they will underscore that the United States ultimately isolates itself by acting as a flailing—and failing—imperial power.

Central to the thinking of the Framers of the U.S. Constitution was the need to tame power. The drive for power had to be contained most fundamentally in the souls of individuals but also through external restraints, including constitutional checks. The Constitution continues to enjoy great respect, at least in ceremonial contexts, but today is a norm for political conduct less in practice than in theory. The spirit of traditional American constitutionalism has greatly dissipated, if not disappeared.

In the last few decades many American leaders have spoken much about America having a moral mission in the world. But the conception of virtue that they assume is different from virtue of the traditional kind in that it does not involve a strong sense of moderation and limits. On the contrary, this putative virtue has manifested and fed the will to power and a sense of limitless possibilities. Influential forces in both the American parties have wanted the world’s only superpower to attain global supremacy in order to promote the allegedly moral cause. They have espoused an outlook on man and society that contrasts sharply with that of the moral-spiritual and political heritage that gave shape to the Constitution.

In the last several decades an ideology of American empire became increasingly common in the American foreign policy and national security establishment inside and outside of government.[i] Needless to say, the advocates of this ideology do not aspire to empire in the old sense of permanent occupation of large territories. The United States can work its will on recalcitrant powers by other means. What the ideology advocates is armed and uncontested global supremacy.

The proponents of the ideology have been able to draw upon various American antecedents, such as the foreign-policy idealism of President Woodrow Wilson, but they have provided a more comprehensive and ideologically intense and systematic justification for U.S. interventionism.

The advocates of the ideology typically stress foreign affairs, but it offers a general view of man, society and the world. For example, the ideology assumes a particular understanding of the so-called “American Founding.” It is characteristic of the ideology that it views political and cultural arrangements with deep roots in history with suspicion. What is great about America, it asserts, is that America broke with tradition, which it regards as the bad old days. America was founded on abstract, universal principles and represents a fresh start for humanity. America, therefore, has a great mission: to spread its principles across the globe, to make possible a similar start for other nations.

The notion that America represents the cause of all mankind is by itself an argument for boosting and accepting American power. To assume in addition that the ideal for which America fights is very different from what history has produced in most countries accentuates the need for mobilizing and asserting American power. All decent, morally sentient people will of course flock to the American cause. As America’s goal is noble, so is the power needed to achieve it noble.

The ideology of empire questions the old American fear of concentration of power. It implies that power exercised for the sake of a better world can be exempted from ordinary restraint. During the George W. Bush presidency, the argument was advanced within and without the administration that especially in times of national emergency the prerogatives of the president trumps the powers of the other branches of government. This is the theory of the so-called “unitary” presidency. Needless to say, we are understood to be living today in a state of permanent emergency, due to Terrorism with a capital “T.”

As presidential advisors and speechwriters, proponents of the ideology of moral empire were able after 9/11 to help shape President Bush’s reaction to the attacks. The latter became the stated reason for launching an enormously ambitious new foreign policy, which was virtually the opposite of what the American people had been led to expect during the president’s 2000 election campaign. George W. Bush had then advocated a more “humble” U. S. foreign policy and had expressed strong reservations about interventionism and nation-building. Now America would not only pursue a world-wide campaign against terrorism but strike preemptively against potential threats; America would also promote freedom and better governance in the world; it would foster and take charge of what the president called “the global democratic revolution.”

The selling and implementation of the “Bush doctrine” was greatly facilitated by the fact that rarely had an ideology become so strongly entrenched in a country’s foreign policy and national security and opinion-molding establishments. Though President Bush became the ideology’s most prominent spokesman, he was assuredly not its originator. It had been spreading for decades. By 9/11 it had strong support in both of the major political parties. Many of its leading advocates had come out of the Democratic party. Some had in their youth been Trotskyite Marxists. Especially on foreign-policy issues, the ideology was well-represented in America’s major media outlets. In the daily press, this was particularly true of the Wall Street Journal, but the Washington Post and the New York Times also gave it much space, as did the main news magazines. Among the opinion magazines, the Weekly Standard supported it most enthusiastically, but very similar foreign-policy views were voiced in National Review. In think tanks that give prominence to foreign policy and national security the ideology was very common. The American Enterprise Institute had perhaps become its political-intellectual nerve-center. The same foreign policy agenda flourished, though certainly not uncontested, on the television networks and major cable channels. On the radio and elsewhere it presented itself as kick-butt American patriotism and attracted millions of flag-waving supporters.

Many of the ideology’s proponents had long promoted war against Iraq. Virtually all of them seemed to assume that its most immediate and urgent practical upshot was to sanitize the Middle East. Millions of so-called “evangelical” Christians here provided grassroots support. In anticipation of Armageddon, America had to be supportive of God’s chosen people, Israel.

Curiously, the political and intellectual activists who did the most to make government and public opinion receptive to the ideology and policies of American empire became known as “neoconservatives.” That designation can be shown to be rather paradoxical. You know who some of the most prominent neoconservatives are: Elliot Abrams, William Bennett, Max Boot, Midge Decter, Douglas Feith, David Frum, Frank Gaffney, Robert Kagan, Charles Krauthammer, the late Irving Kristol and his son William, Michael Ledeen, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Joshua Muravchik, Michael Novak, Richard Perle, Norman Podhoretz, James Woolsey, and Paul Wolfowitz.

Many prominent politicians besides President Bush made the ideology of empire their own. As vice president, Richard Cheney became an especially effective and energetic advocate. Donald Rumsfeld had long associated with and been cultivated by the neoconservative network. In the case of businessmen-politicians like them, the fondness for the ideology probably had less to do with intellectual considerations than with neoconservative rhetoric being politically useful.

Contrary to traditional conservatism, as represented by the British statesman-thinker Edmund Burke (1729-1797) or as represented by many of the Framers of the U.S. Constitution, the ideology of American empire is not respectful of and conservative of an old historical heritage. Neoconservatives are prone to regarding traditional ways as inherently backward and outdated. What is old should give way to what all enlightened persons now realize is mankind’s destiny, which they call “democracy” or “freedom.” The late, much-celebrated political theorist Allan Bloom (1930–92), the author of The Closing of the American Mind (1988), is here representative of the neoconservative prejudice against traditional ways. Bloom was a leading disciple of the German-American political theorist Leo Strauss (1899-1973). Strauss is famous for his anti-“historicism.” In his best-selling book, Bloom argued that the essence of America is not its historically evolved, culturally distinctive traditions, which we know to be full of classical, Christian and British resonances.  No, the U.S. broke with the past. It was founded not on an historically evolved cultural foundation but on abstract, universally valid principles. America is, Bloom asserts, first and foremost an idea, a “proposition.” What he calls “the American project” is for all peoples. The “principles of freedom and equality and the rights based on them are rational and everywhere applicable.” Because America the idea stands above historically generated notions and represents universal right, the United States has a special role to play in the world.[ii]

Bloom and other Straussians simply disregard that American political and other traditions have deep roots in ancient Western civilization, especially as mediated through British culture. Significantly, this old heritage stresses the moral and other weaknesses of human beings and that they need internal and external checks. Power must be constrained.

The ideology of empire points in the opposite direction. It justifies the removal of obstacles, including constitutional obstacles, to the triumph of the American cause. The ideology sanctions an unleashing of what it declares to be virtuous power.

That the United States of America represents the aspirations of all humanity became a staple of the speeches of President George W. Bush. He went so far as to say to his countrymen that advancing the values of freedom and democracy is “the mission that created our nation.” America sees further than other countries. In the State of the Union address in 2005 President Bush told Americans that “we live in the country where the biggest dreams are born.” By then he had long asserted that America’s values are for all people. “There is a value system that cannot be compromised, and that is the values we praise. And if the values are good enough for our people, they ought to be good enough for others.”[iii]

I have argued at length in various places that there are striking similarities between the proponents of the ideology of American empire and the Jacobins who inspired and led the French Revolution. Those French ideologues and political activists were members of clubs that had sprouted all over France. The clubs combined features of a debating society, school and secular church. The most prominent of these clubs met in an abandoned Jacobin monastery in Paris, hence the name of the larger movement. The Jacobins proclaimed “liberté, égalité, et fraternité.” They saw themselves as a great moral force in the world. They even called themselves “les vertueux,” the virtuous. They regarded themselves as champions of universal principles. They demanded a society and world radically different from what history had produced. They stood for liberation and popular rule. They felt called to destroy evil.

So there are good reasons to call the advocates of virtuous American empire “the new Jacobins.”[iv] Like the old Jacobins, the advocates of American empire see themselves as promoting universally valid principles. The demand for American intervention in the world springs from what they like to call “moral clarity.” America must conduct a global campaign for “democracy” and “freedom.” To borrow the title of a 2004 book by David Frum and Richard Perle about the objectives of U.S. Foreign policy, America should put “an end to evil.” 

The French Jacobins were inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). This was particularly true of Maximilien Robespierre, who became the leader of France. Rousseau had argued, in The Social Contract (1762), that “man was born free, but he is everywhere in chains.”[v]  Historically existing societies had warped and imprisoned man’s natural goodness. For man to be liberated, inherited societies and beliefs had to be destroyed. The Jacobins dealt harshly with “evil,” guillotining representatives of the old order and employing a general ruthlessness that culminated in the Reign of Terror.[vi] Considering the vileness of existing society, there was for the Jacobins nothing paradoxical about liberating men by force. In 2002, President Bush informed the U.S. Congress that the “Department of Defense has become the most powerful force for freedom the world has ever seen.”[vii] One recalls Rousseau’s idea that those who resist political right will have to be “forced to be free.”[viii]

An obvious difference between the French and the new Jacobins is that the latter have chosen not France but America as the Liberator of mankind. An obvious similarity is that each would give moral carte blanche to a particular country.

On his European tour in the winter of 2005, President Bush solicited the support of Europe for America’s worldwide campaign for freedom and democracy, saying about Americans and Europeans that “our ideals and our interests lead in the same direction.”[ix] What that direction was had been indicated in a most telling way just a few days earlier in Paris by the president’s then newly-appointed secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice. She made the connection between U.S. foreign policy and Jacobinism probably more explicit than she knew. She said that “the founders of both the French and American republics were inspired by the very same values and by each other.” [x] In other words, the American and French republics had origins in the same revolutionary spirit. This was a flagrant misrepresentation of history, but the statement amply confirmed the Jacobin-like impetus behind the Bush-administration’s foreign policy.

It is here pertinent to observe that, although the people called neoconservatives are not intellectually uniform, their movement is in its main thrust not a variety of conservatism. It is a special, ideologically intense form of modern progressive liberalism. As already mentioned, many of its leaders used to be Trotskyite Marxists, and from their past they brought with them a sense that the world needs to be remade in the image of their own principles.

A traditionally conservative concern for higher values, as in Edmund Burke, has nothing to do with a belief that a single political and social model fits all circumstances or with an urge to transform the world. Burkeans do believe that something better is always possible, and they grope for what is intrinsically right, for what advances the common good and moral universality—this in a complex and imperfect world. But they stress that any society must seek guidance in and build upon the best of its own past and adapt a sense of higher direction to the historical circumstances of time and place.[xi]

I have long pointed to the connection between American neo-Jacobinism and a prominent element in the thought of Leo Strauss and the Straussians. Strauss famously rejected what he called “historicism,” that is, any inclination to be guided in the formulation of moral goals by historical experience or to adapt to historical circumstance. For Strauss and the Straussians, the standard of right has but one source, ahistorical ratiocination. And so Straussians have taught Americans that real philosophers must be “alienated” from the society in which they find themselves and disdain the “ancestral,” that is, whatever is favored by tradition or convention. Do not look to history to learn who you are or ought to be. To philosophize properly is to consider “universal or abstract principles,” and this “has necessarily a revolutionary, disturbing, unsettling effect.”[xii] That neo-Jacobin ideology shares this prejudice against the old and sees abstract universal principles as unsettling should be illustrated further.

Most leading neoconservatives think of themselves as representing a progressive, even revolutionary force. Professor Harry Jaffa, another prominent disciple of Strauss, asserts the following: “To celebrate the American Founding is . . . to celebrate revolution.” The American Revolution in behalf of freedom may appear mild, “as compared with subsequent revolutions in France, Russia, China, Cuba, or elsewhere [but] it nonetheless embodied the greatest attempt at innovation that human history has recorded.”[xiii] What is admirable about America, then, is how it differs from the past. What is at once distinctive, innovative and noble is the idea of America. For the late Irving Kristol, the reputed “godfather” of neoconservatism, who claimed to be an admirer of Strauss, the United States is defined by the abstract principles to which it is committed. America is, Kristol wrote, “ideological, like the Soviet Union of yesteryear.”[xiv]

Straussians and neoconservatives are fond of referring to “the Founding,” because that term suggests that America had a fresh start. Adopting ahistorical universal principles, America turned its back on the bad old ways of Europe. This use of the term “Founding” conceals that prior to the War of Independence, which Straussians prefer to call “the American Revolution,” and prior to the framing of the Constitution, America already comprised well-functioning societies based on Christian, classical, and specifically British traditions. The term “American Revolution” appeals to neo-Jacobins because it conceals the great extent to which, after the War of Independence, America, including the U.S. Constitution, was a continuation, indeed, in important respects a reaffirmation, of that heritage.[xv]

Neoconservatives have long tried to transfer the allegiance of Americans to a redefined, Jacobin-style America. William Kristol has insisted that America must have great military and other governmental might vigorously to promote its universal principles. He has called for “national greatness conservatism.” He has argued that the old American suspicion of strong, centralized, activist Federal government must be abandoned.[xvi] According to Kristol senior, it was the historical role of neoconservatism “to convert the Republican party, and conservatism in general, against their wills” and to make them accept the new, far more ambitious conception of government.[xvii]

Another leading neoconservative, Michael Ledeen, an advisor on national security in the Reagan White House, openly portrays the America with which he identifies as a destroyer of existing societies. According to Ledeen, “Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day . . .  Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity, which menaces their traditions . . . . [We] must destroy them to advance our historic mission.”[xviii]

It should be obvious that the term “neoconservatism” is very misleading.

The American Framers saw man as having both higher and lower potentialities. They were acutely aware of the moral preconditions of responsible freedom. They feared original sin in themselves and others. They stressed the need to check the darker potentialities of human nature, the unleashing of which could wreak havoc on the individual and society. They hoped that in personal life moral character would restrain the desire for self-aggrandizement and that in national political life the checks and balances of the U.S. Constitution would contain and domesticate the all-too-human desire for power. Personal self-control and constitutionalism were but different aspects of the effort to tame the voracious ego. Freedom could not be bestowed on a people. It had to be achieved over time by individuals acting responsibly, which involved protracted inner and outer struggle. Freedom could be safeguarded in America only by the continuation of the kind of culture and personality type that had fostered it in the first place.[xix] The primary reason why the U.S. Constitution has become a mere shadow of its former self is that it cannot function as intended without the just-mentioned culture and character traits. [xx]

Today a more grasping, “imperialistic” ego is throwing off the old American constitutional self and related constitutional restraints. A desire for self-aggrandizement that is hard to reconcile with the original constitutional temperament is today transforming traditional limited, decentralized American government into a national security Superstate. The neo-Jacobin desire for armed global supremacy is less importunate at this moment only because of the enormous budget deficits and a staggering national debt.

It was partly to break free of the old American fear of unlimited power and the view of life that it implies that the new Jacobins tried to transfer the allegiance of Americans to a reinvented America. They propounded and keep propounding a new myth that I discuss at length in my 2003 book America the Virtuous—the myth of a morally noble, “exceptional” America—according to which America should be given free rein in its mission to transform the world. This myth provides the appetite for power with the moral justification that it likes to have.

The old Western notion of human moral and intellectual imperfection and the accompanying recognition of a need for self-control and humility can be traced back through Christianity, the ancient Greeks and the Old Testament. This view of human nature and the political attitudes that it fosters tend to forestall, censure, and defuse an inordinate desire for power, hence is not pleasing to the ego that wants to dominate other human beings.

The ideology of neo-Jacobinism, by contrast, offers a potent stimulant to the will to power. That will often breaks through the moralistic surface behind which it hides. One prominent media commentator, who gave expression to the will to dominate long before 9/11, is Charles Krauthammer. He kept telling his countrymen that America is no “mere international citizen” but “the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome.” It should be using its power to create a world more to its liking. It should “reshape norms, alter expectations and create new realities. How? By unapologetic and implacable demonstrations of will.”[xxi] Given America’s noble cause, why should its exercise of power not be “unapologetic” and “implacable”? Robert Kagan, another leading foreign policy commentator, similarly wants America to be more forceful and confrontational. He wrote in 2002: “America . . . can sometimes seem like a bully on the world stage . . . . But really, the 1,200 pound gorilla is an underachiever in the bullying business.”[xxii]

The U.S. framers assumed not only a need for restraints on power but for particular interests to accommodate each other. As applied to international affairs, this assumption would mean that states should check and balance and try to accommodate each other—which is the opposite of unilateralism. The notion that America knows better than all other nations and has a right to dictate terms to them is alien to the spirit  that informs American constitutionalism.

The sharp contrast between neo-Jacobin supremacist thinking and the ethos of an earlier America is suggested by comments that Alexander Hamilton made in 1797 about the French government. Having been a leading champion of the U.S. Constitution, Hamilton was secretary of the treasury in the George Washington administration. He found the French government’s Jacobin-flavored desire to dictate to other nations unacceptable. France “betrayed a spirit of universal domination; an opinion that she had a right to be legislatrix of nations; that they are all bound to submit to her mandates, to take from her their moral, political, and religious creeds; that her plastic and regenerating hand is to mould them into whatever shape she thinks fit; and that her interest is to be the sole measure of the rights of the rest of the world.” Such claims, Hamilton argued, are repugnant “to the general rights of nations, to the true principles of liberty, [and] to the freedom of opinion of mankind.”[xxiii] The American constitutionalist temperament was and remains incompatible with the Jacobin spirit. 

For Christians, the greatest sin is pride. Before them, the Greeks warned of the great danger of conceit and arrogance. Hubris, they said, invites Nemesis. Two inscriptions on the Apollonian temple at Delphi summed up the proper attitude to life. One was “Everything in moderation,” the other “Know Thyself.”  To know yourself meant to recognize that you are not one of the gods but a mere mortal. In the Old Testament we read in Proverbs: “Humility goeth before honor.” (15:33) “Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord.” (16:5) “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” (16:18) “The Lord will destroy the house of the proud.” (15:25)

To the new Jacobins, such warnings and calls for humility have the quaint sound of something long outdated. Why should those who know how humanity should live question their own ideas or right to dominate? What the world needs is, to use again that favorite term of theirs, “moral clarity”—not obfuscation. This self-absorbed and self-applauding attitude could hardly be more different from the character type that the old Americans admired and that the Framers of the Constitution hoped would animate and sustain America’s political institutions. In 1789 President George Washington proclaimed a day of thanksgiving for all the good bestowed by Almighty God on the American people. He asked his fellow Americans to unite “in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the Great Lord and Ruler of nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions.” This is the voice of an older America that in recent decades has been shouted down by neo-Jacobin nationalism.

The vast influence of the new Jacobins was decisive in formulating and launching the Bush doctrine and in pushing through the war against Iraq. For obvious, reasons they have suffered a loss of prestige since then. But so numerous, well-funded and deeply entrenched are they in institutions that form American policy and opinion that they cannot be expected simply to fade away. They are more likely to regroup and to reappear in somewhat different garb, for the moment more prominently in the Democratic party. As for the old American constitutional republic, it suffered severe blows in the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first. A come-back for constitutionalism would, most fundamentally, require a cultural and moral renaissance that nurtures the constitutional personality in some contemporary form, but of such a development there are at present only flickering signs.   

Forced lockdown of a city. Militarized police riding tanks in the streets. Door-to-door armed searches without warrant. Families thrown out of their homes at gunpoint to be searched without probable cause. Businesses forced to close. Transport shut down.

These were not the scenes from a military coup in a far off banana republic, but rather the scenes just over a week ago in Boston as the United States got a taste of martial law. The ostensible reason for the military-style takeover of parts of Boston was that the accused perpetrator of a horrific crime was on the loose. The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city. This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.

What has been sadly forgotten in all the celebration of the capture of one suspect and the killing of his older brother is that the police state tactics in Boston did absolutely nothing to catch them. While the media crowed that the apprehension of the suspects was a triumph of the new surveillance state – and, predictably, many talking heads and Members of Congress called for even more government cameras pointed at the rest of us – the fact is none of this caught the suspect. Actually, it very nearly gave the suspect a chance to make a getaway.

The “shelter in place” command imposed by the governor of Massachusetts was lifted before the suspect was caught. Only after this police state move was ended did the owner of the boat go outside to check on his property, and in so doing discover the suspect.

No, the suspect was not discovered by the paramilitary troops terrorizing the public. He was discovered by a private citizen, who then placed a call to the police. And he was identified not by government surveillance cameras, but by private citizens who willingly shared their photographs with the police.

As journalist Tim Carney wrote last week:

“Law enforcement in Boston used cameras to ID the bombing suspects, but not police cameras. Instead, authorities asked the public to submit all photos and videos of the finish-line area to the FBI, just in case any of them had relevant images. The surveillance videos the FBI posted online of the suspects came from private businesses that use surveillance to punish and deter crime on their property.”

Sadly, we have been conditioned to believe that the job of the government is to keep us safe, but in reality the job of the government is to protect our liberties. Once the government decides that its role is to keep us safe, whether economically or physically, they can only do so by taking away our liberties. That is what happened in Boston.

Three people were killed in Boston and that is tragic. But what of the fact that over 40 persons are killed in the United States each day, and sometimes ten persons can be killed in one city on any given weekend? These cities are not locked-down by paramilitary police riding in tanks and pointing automatic weapons at innocent citizens.

This is unprecedented and is very dangerous. We must educate ourselves and others about our precious civil liberties to ensure that we never accept demands that we give up our Constitution so that the government can pretend to protect us.

Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

The front desk called called nervously as we closed in on a half hour before the press conference start time on April 17th. Two young men fully dressed in Ron Paul regalia, but unfortunately of the t-shirt and shorts variety, were desperate to get in to the press conference announcing Ron Paul’s new Institute for Peace and Prosperity. Unfortunately the venue had a dress code, and shorts and t-shirts were definitely out, Ron Paul fans or not. The young men were dejected, pleading with the front desk as I arrived downstairs.

“Please please if we can put some better clothes on can we come in to the conference,” they asked desperately. They pointed to a small group going upstairs in only slightly-more-formal-than-shorts jeans and casual button-down shirts, who somehow squeaked through the watchful eyes of the establishment.

I smiled and joked, “surely you can do better than that, but sure come back when you have changed.”

I rushed back upstairs to try and handle the million and one details and forgot about it.

After the conference up to me came two beaming fellows in matching but hilariously goofy khaki pants and pink shirts (one not very well-fitting). Twins of very different races.

“Hey, do you remember us? We were the guys who showed up in shorts! We ran as fast as we could to Union Station, grabbed some decent clothes, told the clerk not to bother to fold them or put them in a bag, dressed in the street as we ran back to the press conference! And here we are!”

I was so impressed with these young men. With their dedication and their determination. These are the types of supporters that Ron Paul has motivated and excited throughout the country and beyond. What a thrill to have people like that interested in Dr. Paul’s new venture. We will strive to live up to their hopes and expectations.

The press conference went off without a hitch, as can be seen in the video. It was standing room only and there were so many friends and colleagues who came out to see us, including a healthy delegation from the former Ron Paul Congressional office. Many of these are spread by the winds to different fields. But as we have all discovered, in a strange way we are all still colleagues and when we get together we still speak very much the same language. Even Dr. Paul has noticed this, remarking the other day how pleased he was that we all seemed to have a shared identity and retained collegiality.

My friend Oleg Kravchenko, acting Ambassador from Belarus, showed up to the event. Regardless of what one may feel about the internal political and economic dynamics of Belarus, my friendship with Oleg dates back to our shared opposition to the constant US intervention in the internal affairs of that country. How many millions of our tax dollars have been wasted trying to overthrow a leader in Belarus who means the US no harm and in fact would love to cultivate better relations? But US foreign policy is a zero sum game – do what we say and we will subsidize you, resist and we will overrthrow you or bomb you. There is simply no place for those who would rather pursue their own economic and political destinies – a phenomenon thhat logic would suggest is a natural development at the end of communist forced conformity.

Even many who call themselves “libertarian” refuse to consider this part of non-interventionism – leaving the other guy alone even if you disagree with how he is doing things. Like a know-it-all neighbor, they demand countries like Cuba and Belarus and China, and so on, do as we say or else. This is the point where they toss the non-aggression theory out the window and become indistinguishable from the neo-conservatives.

Oleg was one of the speakers at Dr. Paul’s regular Thursday luncheon group back in the Congressional office, delivering a message about the millions of dollars in lost trade and business opportunities for Americans in his country because of the wrong-headed US policy of sanctions to force “democratization.” Is it any more moral for the US government to deny its citizens the right to invest and profit from business activity in Belarus than any policy pursued by the government in Minsk?

This will be a focus of the Institute – the unintended consequencess of interventionism. Opposing an interventionist foreign policy is far more than simply being antiwar. US war on a foreign country is most often the last stages of a long policy of interventionism and internal manipulation. Non-interventionism begins with the first stages of attempted manipulation. From the National Endowment for Democracy, a thirty year plus neo-con regime change piggy bank, to cut-out funding of NGOs by USAID, who endeavor to influence elections overseas or to undermine governments who do not do as they are told, interventionism is at its core a violation of the golden rule and as such is to be resisted from its very conception. No more color revolutions in Ukraine, Iran, Moldova, Georgia, Venezuela, and so on. The track record is a disaster. And it is immoral. We must do better.

More on the press conference soon, but in the meantime you can now follow the Institute on Twitter @RonPaulInstitut and on Facebook as well.

Daniel McAdams is Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute.

This week, as Americans were horrified by the attacks in Boston, both houses of Congress considered legislation undermining our liberty in the name of “safety.”  Gun control continued to be the focus of the Senate, where an amendment expanding federal “background checks” to gun show sales and other private transfers dominated the debate.  While the background check amendment failed to pass, proponents of gun control have made it clear they will continue their efforts to enact new restrictions on gun ownership into law.

While it did not receive nearly as much attention as the debate on gun control, the House of Representatives passed legislation with significant implications for individual liberty: the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA).  CISPA proponents claim that the legislation is necessary to protect Americans from foreign “cyber terrorists,” but the real effect of this bill will be to further erode Americans’ online privacy.

Under CISPA, Internet corporations are authorized to hand over the private information of American citizens to federal agents, as long as they can justify the violation of your privacy in the name of protecting “cyber security”.  Among the items that may be shared are your e-mails, browsing history, and online transactions.

Like the PATRIOT Act, CISPA violates the fourth amendment by allowing federal agencies to obtain private information without first seeking a warrant from a federal judge. The law also allows federal agencies to pass your information along to other federal bureaucrats — again without obtaining a warrant.  And the bill provides private companies with immunity from lawsuits regardless of the damage done to anyone whose personal information is shared with the government.

CISPA represents a troubling form of corporatism, where large companies cede their responsibility to protect their property to the federal government, at the expense of their customers’ privacy and liberty. In this respect, CISPA can be thought of as an electronic version of the Transportation Security Administration, which has usurped the authority over airline security from private airlines. However, CISPA will prove to be far more invasive than even the most robust TSA screening.

CISPA and the gun control bill are only the most recent examples of politicians manipulating fear to con the people into giving up their liberties.  Of course, the people are told the legislation is for  “limited purposes,” but authority granted to government is rarely, if ever, used solely for the purpose for which it is granted. For example, the American people were promised that the extraordinary powers granted the government by the PATRIOT Act would only be used against terrorism. Yet soon after the bill became law, reports surfaced that it was being used for non-terrorism purposes. In fact, according to data compiled by the American Civil Liberties Union, 76 percent of the uses of the controversial “sneak-and-peak” warrants where related to the war on drugs!

Sadly, I expect this week’s tragic attacks in Boston to be used to justify new restrictions on liberty. Within 48 hours of the attack in Boston, at least one Congressman was calling for increased use of surveillance cameras to expand the government’s ability to monitor our actions, while another Senator called for a federal law mandating background checks before Americans can buy “explosive powder.”

I would not be surprised if the Transportation Security Administration uses this tragedy to claim new authority to “screen” Americans before they can attend sporting or other public events. The Boston attack may also be used as another justification for creating a National ID Card tied to a federal database with “biometric” information. The only thing that will stop them is if the American people rediscover the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin that you cannot achieve security by allowing government to take their liberties.

As we see each new administration, regardless of claimed ideological or political differences, pursuing the same destructive policies abroad and trampling our civil liberties at home, we must now face the key issues of our time. The issues of war or peace, republic or empire, liberty at home or the encroaching police state, can no longer be ignored. We find ourselves at the edge of a precipice, where it is obvious that the failed policies of the past cannot be repackaged under a new name to solve our crisis today.

Many still believe each four years that if only their candidate – with the newly-minted and freshly-printed slogans – is elected, we will finally be led to a new springtime in America, to peaceful and prosperous days ahead. But regardless of party, with only cosmetic differences the same policies are being pursued.

Those disgusted by the wars pursued by the Bush Administration, based on lies and manipulation, eagerly waved signs welcoming “change” and voted for new management. But the new manager turned out to be just as bad as the previous one, and in many cases even worse.

The festering wound called Guantanamo Bay has not been closed even as most of its dehumanized prisoners have been cleared for release. Those left there, most of whom not found guilty of anything, are resorting to secret hunger strikes in the hopes of perishing in peace rather than being forced to endure the misery.

The current administration has taken its predecessor’s flirtation with the use of drones to kill anonymously anywhere it chooses and turned it into the cornerstone of US foreign policy.

In Pakistan alone, this administration has killed nearly four thousand people, many of them civilians, with drone strikes. By some estimates, including a recent study by Stanford University, as many as 50 civilians are killed by drones for every terrorist. The administration uses “signatures” to determine who to kill, but these behavior patterns are not at all defined and most often encompass the normal day-to-day activities of farmers and others in Pakistan and elsewhere.

When the administration was forced recently to answer the question of whether it believed it had the legal right to kill Americans on American soil by drone strike, it did not, contrary to press coverage, deny that “right.” Instead, it merely reassured us that it would not kill any American at home by drone who was not considered a “combatant.” And who determines that? Under the precedent set by the previous Bush Administration, it is claimed the president has that imperial privilege.

Just a couple of years ago, Congress passed and the president signed a military spending authorization bill, the NDAA for 2012, which told the president that he has the right to indefinitely detain anyone, even Americans on US soil, indefinitely and without trial if he determines they have provided any sort of material support for terrorist groups or associated forces. What does “material” and “associated” mean? They won’t tell us.

Congress has allowed itself to be made irrelevant, behaving like children while deferring to the president the important decisions it is required to make by the Constitution. On Iraq, Congress left it to the president to decide what to do. On Libya, when in 2011 the president launched an illegal war under false pretenses, Congress did not bother to make a sound. As the president commits the US military to acts of war — covert and overt — against Iran, Syria, Mali, and so on, Congress watches meekly on the sidelines.

There are exceptions, of course, including many Members I have worked closely with over the years in attempt to win our colleagues back over to the side of the Constitution. Many of these friends and former colleagues continue this struggle from inside and they should be commended and supported. I am afraid they are at present still a small minority, largely ignored by House leadership of both parties. But their ranks are growing.

The framers of the Constitution viewed Congress not only as a co-equal branch, but as the first among equals — the people’s branch of government. The people’s branch has nearly lost all relevance today. No wonder poll after poll shows that the American people are disgusted with the whole process. According to the most recent Rasmussen survey, only eight percent of Americans believe Congress is doing a good job, and 53 percent of those surveyed do not believe either party really represents the American people.

We need something new.

We need a hard look at the key issues of our time: the future of freedom, the future of the human race, and of the United States. Neither the Republican nor the Democrat party are pro-peace. They are merely partisan. How many of our pro-peace allies during the Bush administration have disappeared now that a Democrat is in office pursuing the same policies? Also, see how many of the Bush-era hawks have questioned “Obama’s wars” only for petty partisan reasons. It is about political advantage rather than principle. But this is all coming to an end. It cannot be sustained. Every day more and more come over to our camp, the non-interventionists.

At the hands of the warmongers millions have died for nothing. Iraq, Korea, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali, Venezuela, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, and so on. How can we even know the full extent?

According to the US Special Operations Forces commander, Adm. William H. McRaven, testifying before the Senate Armed Services emerging threats subcommittee earlier this month, “On any day of the year you will find special operations forces [in] somewhere between 70 and 90 countries around the world.”

Why? To what end? And most importantly, where is the authorization? On whose permission does the US Special Forces Command conduct war in 70 to 90 countries at any given time? Are there stacks of hidden declarations of war somewhere that no American knows about? The constitution gives the president no power at all to make war on any given day in 70 to 90 countries, to use secret forces to undermine domestic political currents in favor of movements and politicians that the US elites judge to be “in line” with their interests. Again it is the sign of a nation that has lost its way.

It is time for us to stand up for peace, a peace that is intricately connected to justice, shared human values, and prosperity. A peace that leaves us safer than the empty lies of the warmongers. A peace that leaves our economic future with some glimmer of hope, that leaves our next generations with some glimmer of hope. A peace that frees up the economic resources that can prevent our children from being slaves to the impoverishing imperial ambitions of those directing our current foreign policy.

We are the real patriots. We believe in the United States. We believe the time is now to advance our issues as they have never been advanced before. Above all, we are the optimists. We believe in a brighter future.

The Cold War, as we now know, was itself largely hyped up by beneficiaries of the military build-up, but at the very least we should have expected at the end of the thousands of missiles pointed at us some sort of peace dividend. Instead, thanks to those whose careers and fortunes depended in some manner on the military industrial complex, we stumbled from the end of the war on communism to the war to control the world. This war has failed.

This is the agenda that we are going to advance. This is why I have decided to found my own peace institute that seeks friends and allies beyond all political, party, and ideological lines. We have a great battle of ideas ahead of us. It is time for all like-minded individuals, regardless of political, ideological, or other orientation to join this battle of ideas. We are ready to provide guidance.

I feel so strongly about this issue, the issue of war and peace at home and abroad, that I have for the first time given my name to an institute.

We do not have to agree on every single issue. We should tolerate those views that we may otherwise find objectionable — as long as they do not contradict our main shared values: an end to the American empire overseas and the assault on our civil liberties at home. At the end of my 2008 presidential run I gathered together the candidates of the “minor” political parties to see whether we could find some common ground, to see whether there might be some momentum to push forward a new kind of program beyond the domination of the two major parties. The joint statement we came up with then can very well serve as a guideline for our shared mission to restore peace and liberty to this country. To secure a better future for coming generations.

The statement reads:

We Agree

Foreign Policy: The Iraq War must end as quickly as possible with removal of all our soldiers from the region. We must initiate the return of our soldiers from around the world, including Korea, Japan, Europe and the entire Middle East. We must cease the war propaganda, threats of a blockade and plans for attacks on Iran, nor should we re-ignite the cold war with Russia over Georgia. We must be willing to talk to all countries and offer friendship and trade and travel to all who are willing. We must take off the table the threat of a nuclear first strike against all nations.

Privacy: We must protect the privacy and civil liberties of all persons under US jurisdiction. We must repeal or radically change the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, and the FISA legislation. We must reject the notion and practice of torture, eliminations of habeas corpus, secret tribunals, and secret prisons. We must deny immunity for corporations that spy willingly on the people for the benefit of the government. We must reject the unitary presidency, the illegal use of signing statements and excessive use of executive orders.

The National Debt: We believe that there should be no increase in the national debt. The burden of debt placed on the next generation is unjust and already threatening our economy and the value of our dollar. We must pay our bills as we go along and not unfairly place this burden on a future generation.

The Federal Reserve: We seek a thorough investigation, evaluation and audit of the Federal Reserve System and its cozy relationships with the banking, corporate, and other financial institutions. The arbitrary power to create money and credit out of thin air behind closed doors for the benefit of commercial interests must be ended. There should be no taxpayer bailouts of corporations and no corporate subsidies. Corporations should be aggressively prosecuted for their crimes and frauds.

This is an historic moment. The era of the neo-conservative control over our foreign policy is passing. Those pushing authoritarianism at home are being challenged and rejected. The American people are turning away from a foreign policy of empire because they understand that they cannot afford it, that it does not make us safer but rather the opposite; that the price of empire abroad is a police state at home, and that throughout history all empires fall and fall in a catastrophic way. We can avoid this terrible fate if we stand up together.

Please, join us. Support our efforts. Become involved in our mission. Peace and prosperity.