The Classical Liberal Theory of Empire

0:00Okay, now, the subject of our conference, imperialism, could not be more topical, could not be more on topic. Today, there are influential writers and politicians who openly proclaim the triumphant emergence of an American empire. Now, some writers, like Niall Ferguson, this English guy, say that the Americans, well, there could be an American empire, We're having an American empire, but Americans don't have the stamina to keep up an empire, sadly. Others like Walter Williams, whom I respect, the economist of George Mason, says Americans today are not as good as they were in the greatest generation. They don't have the courage to have an empire.

0:47But many people are saying, we do have an empire and all the better for it. We are supposed to be the reincarnation of the British Empire, bigger and better, and also a new and infinitely more powerful Rome. There are a lot of people who are thrilled at that. We will rule the world through a growing stockpile of nuclear weapons, against whom, by the way, through militarizing the space above the earth and monopolizing the military uses of space, through electronic technology that can eavesdrop on every single communication, everywhere, and through all the other products of the capitalist system that the government appropriates for its own purposes. And when you hear about so-called defense expenditures or war or threatening war or attacking, keep in mind what's going on and what always goes on.

1:41And that is that the magnificent American wealth machine produces the means that then the government siphons off for its own aggressive purposes. The great classic liberals opposed war and what led to war, military buildups and imperialism. The more consistent and so-called doctrinaire of these libertarians, the more doctrinaire they were, you know, dogmatic and so on, The more bitterly they opposed war. Frederic Bastiat, the great Bastiat, for instance, the great Herbert Spencer, Richard Cobden and John Bright, the leaders of the Manchester School who brought free trade to England. They were against war for some obvious reasons and for some not so obvious reasons.

2:30War means ruined lives, devastation and death. That's why governments are anxious to keep the pictures of war from their people. Our own government doesn't even permit showing photographs of all the flag-draped coffins that arrive at the Dover Airfield Base every day, or rather every night, secretly arriving and then dispersed throughout the country. Also war works against everything that's built up by the system of voluntary interaction based on the principle of private property. It is the opposite of civilization. As Ludwig von Mises said in his book, Liberalism, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus was wrong.

3:17It's peace, not war, that is the father of all things. More subtly, the libertarians of the past and of today set themselves against war because it always enhances the power of the state. Maybe you've heard the phrase, war is the health of the state. Murray Rothbard introduced it into libertarian thinking. It stems from Randolph Bourne, an anti-war radical from the time of the First World War. Murray stressed this idea because that is what history has demonstrated. And you can read about it in detail in Robert Higgs's indispensable work, Crisis and Leviathan, where he shows how our wars have expanded the oppressive power of the American government The Founders of the American Republic looked on the great monarchies of Europe as military machines, which indeed they were.

4:14They were engaged in constant warfare with each other to build up their empires around the world, meanwhile oppressing their own people and grinding taxes, ever-higher taxes out of their subjects. George Washington, in his farewell address, stated that,

4:47Richard Cobden, who was the great activist and theorist of classical liberal anti-war and anti-imperialist ideas in the mid-19th century, Thomas Jefferson wrote, I am for free commerce with all nations, political connection with none, and little or no diplomatic establishment. In his second inaugural address, Jefferson warned against entangling alliances with any foreign country, because that was the sure way to get us involved in wars that were none of our business. Now, James Madison is often considered the father of the Constitution.

5:34This is what Madison had to say about war. Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because war comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies, from armies proceed debts and taxes, and armies and debts and taxes are the known instrument for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war too, the discretionary power of the executive, the president, is extended. This is the father of the Constitution. No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Elsewhere, Madison wrote, it may be a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against dangers real or imagined from abroad.

6:30Well, in recent years, we have to actually illustrate the loss of liberty at home. It's all over the place. And these politicians are so short-sighted, all they care about is the next election. There is one, of course, magnificent and heroic exception, a friend of the Mises Institute, a congressman from Texas, but aside from him, I think it's literally the case, all they think about is their own re-election. What's going to happen 10 or 20 years from now with different people in charge doesn't matter to them. Supposing that someday the Republicans lose control of the presidency, I mean, is that conceivable when the dollar collapses and we go into a tailspin?

7:19Well, then there might be a few spectacular killings, and then they'll start arresting, throwing into some gulag somewhere, pro-life activists, you know, could be considered having links to terrorism, as they would say, gun, pro-gun activists, right, militiamen, or anybody else who connected with a hate group. But why should the people who temporarily have control of the police power care about that? That only holds for the future. So this view of the dangers of war and the dangers of extending the power of the presidency was shared by other founding fathers. It is no accident that the power to declare war was vested in Congress. That's what Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution says. Congress shall have power to declare war. The president was commander-in-chief only in the sense that once Congress declared war, he would be responsible for deploying the armies. This principle was so firmly established and so well People understood that even power-hungry presidents, power-hungry presidents like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt felt compelled to go to Congress for a declaration of war.

8:44This was after they had maneuvered the country into war, but that's a different question. I can't go into that. I'm probably the last of the real Roosevelt haters, and it would take too much time. But now we have so-called conservatives, self-styled believers in the strict construction of the Constitution, who say that the President may, just on his own, attack, bomb and invade any country he feels like. Some conservatives, some strict believers in strict construction of the Constitution. This policy of neutrality and non-intervention was the golden rule of American foreign policy until the end of the 19th century. And under this policy, under this minding our own business, this America became an economic powerhouse, the economic powerhouse, Stupor Mundi, the wonder of the world.

9:43We didn't send armies or bombers or foreign aid to other countries, rather the American attitude was that the United States should set an example and be a beacon to the world Showing you what a free people can achieve. That by the way was the meaning and the point of that statue in New York Harbor, which the French people sent us as a birthday present a hundred years after the Declaration of Independence. The statue has nothing to do with immigration. There was a Lazarus poem that was tacked on afterwards. The name of the statue is liberty and lightning in the world. That's why she's carrying the torch. though it was not the policy of invite the world, invade the world. It was simply acting as an example to the world.

10:31There were wars, of course, in the 19th century, the war of 1812, the war against Mexico, the final awful ordeal of the 1860s, but there were always opponents of those wars. In the war of 1812, New England was on the point of seceding from the Union. In the Mexican War, a congressman from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln denounced President Polk and his war. A few years later, the same Abraham Lincoln was responsible for the greatest bloodletting in American history, 620,000 dead. That's pretty much as much as all the other wars put together. Well, we can't get, there are other people here who know a lot more about that awful ordeal that we got into in the aftermath than I do.

11:29But there's this continuing prejudice in the back of everybody's mind against the South. But one little point about the war for southern independence, which a lot of people call the of the Civil War, Gore Vidal, maybe you've heard of him and seen his stuff, he's as good on foreign policy as he's bad on economics, but he got into a lot of trouble with the New York intellectuals when he wrote that those people up there cared a lot more about the Spanish Civil War than they ever cared about the American Civil War, and that got The most prominent anti-war movement in the 19th century came at the time of the Spanish-American War and the war against the Philippines, our first war in Asia, we are now up to our 6th and 7th Asian wars.

12:35The fever for war against Spain was hyped up by the alleged unspeakable sufferings of the Cubans at the hands of the unspeakable Spaniards. The U.S. Navy ship, the Maine, exploded in Havana Harbor. What was it even doing in Havana Harbor? After ultimatums to Spain, President McKinley got the war he was aiming for all along. Now, meanwhile, a cabal had been operating behind the scenes in the American government, very similar to the neoconservative cabal that got us into the Iraq War. It included Theodore Roosevelt, the effective head of the Navy, John Hay, the Secretary of State, Henry Cabot Lodge, a leading senator, and Alfred Thayer Mahon, a top theoretician in the Navy Department.

13:29Mahan is an odd bird. He was very influential. He was not a fighting man. He was a bureaucrat. He spent his time writing books, pushing for bigger and bigger budgets for the Navy. In 1893, he published a work, The Influence of Naval Power Upon History. Talk about humanitarian. In Germany, the Kaiser loved the book, had it translated into German and sent it to all his naval commanders. It fueled the naval race between Germany and England. It was so fateful for the world. In Japan, the naval officers loved the book, used it to build up the Japanese navy. The same thing happened in other imperialist countries. So Mahan contributed greatly to the mad and very scary armaments race among the great powers.

14:21What Theodore Roosevelt and his buddies were aiming for was to make America into a world power with colonies like the other countries. They loved and admired power and military force, they favored what they called the large policy. The small policy was what used to be the traditional American way, minding our own business and keeping our distance from world politics and the wars that came with playing a big part in world politics. but this cabal had contempt for that small policy they didn't understand really what the life of ordinary decent Americans was Mahan was a lifelong bureaucrat Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge were old money they looked down on people who worked for a living in the hustle and bustle of the marketplace considered it faintly ridiculous and it's no accident that today's neo are considered of his love, Theodore Roosevelt.

15:20That I can understand. What I can't understand is what Theodore Roosevelt is doing on Mount Rushmore, along with Washington and Jefferson. Lincoln makes more sense. But how come whoever the sculptor was who created Mount Rushmore, how come he gets to select the four greatest American presidents? And everybody has to pay attention to that. At the Mises Institute, we have our own list of the Greatest Presidents. Grover Cleveland might be included, or especially Martin Van Buren, both from Buffalo, New York.

15:57But my own sentimental favorite is Zachary Taylor, who got sick at his inaugural party and died a month later.

16:08The idolization nowadays of Theodore Roosevelt is a bad sign. He was an unabashed, out-and-out American imperialist as today's neo-Kanzar. When the war with Spain came, he and his co-conspirators were ready with their plans. William McKinley had promised not to annex an inch of territory. Once Spain was beaten, the United States annexed Puerto Rico, established a protectorate over Cuba. Worst of all, America forced Spain to cede the Philippines. Now the boundaries of the United States are not this continental stronghold, this impregnable fortress that we had in the North American continent, but 7,000 miles away on the other side of the Pacific in the middle of a fierce rivalry among the imperialist powers.

17:01There were some who were already beginning to talk about the coming inevitable war with Japan. The Filipinos weren't happy to exchange one imperialist master for another, so So we had to send an army to the Philippines to suppress a rebellion, just as invasion and occupation of Iraq has created what they call an insurgency. Funny how people don't like to be invaded and occupied by foreigners. The decision to annex the Philippines, vicious war against the Filipinos, about 200,000 men, women and children killed, generated an anti-war movement, the Anti-Imperialist League, which William Grahame Sumner In the 19th century, first professor of sociology in the country at Yale and a hardcore libertarian.

18:16That's when professors of sociology could be libertarians. He advocated the gold standard, always argued against every scheme for inflation, opposed coercive labor unions, defended the rights of non-union workers. Those are the unions and historians, of course, called scabs. He opposed what he called plutocrats, but by plutocrats he meant men of wealth who's the government instead of the market to gain and increase their wealth. As part of this opposition, he fought against the protective tariffs to the point where the Republican trustees of Yale tried to get him fired. He also tried to influence public opinion. One of his best known essays is called The Forgotten Man.

19:05Man. Who is the Forgotten Man? Well, someone says, let's say the two social reforms get together, A and B, and they plan to help someone who's in dire straits, C. Now C might be in dire straits because of his bad habits, his bad lifestyle, or because of bad luck. The social reformers, A and B, wanted to help C from their own funds, or by appealing to others for their donated funds, There would be no problem. That would be one thing. But instead, what they do is to target Dee, the forgotten man, and force him to give up some part of his money to support poor C. Now Dee, the forgotten man, is a productive member of society.

19:52He works hard for himself and his family. He's not a burden to society, and so he contributes to it. He's a quiet man, doesn't like to make a fuss, doesn't ask for special favors from others, especially from the taxpayers. He obeys the laws, pays his taxes, asks for nothing further than to be left alone, to work for himself, to accumulate as much wealth as his talents will allow him to, and to leave his children better off than he was. Everyone celebrates and praises the social reformers A and B. They applaud their and applaud their compassion and helping poor C. Everyone loves that. But they don't pay the slightest attention to Dee, they forget about him, although he's the one who keeps the whole system running through his work and his life.

20:41And Sumner adds, interestingly, sometimes forgotten man is a woman. Well, in 1899, Sumner gave a talk in New Haven, it was entitled, The Conquest of the United States by Spain. That's after our great, glorious victory over the Spanish wooden fleet that had, of course, been placed under the protection of the Virgin Mary, so the Spaniards thought they were invincible. But Spencer said the conquest of the United States by Spain, what could he mean by that? It kicked the hell out of Spain, the American people were deliriously happy, north and south. I want to define the issue. We have beaten Spain in a military conflict, but we are submitting to be conquered by her on the field of ideas and policies.

21:32Nations as well as individuals have a character, they have a signature. America originated in a revolt against imperialism, called the American Revolution. Our country was dedicated to the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which of course was understood to include the right to private property. The Constitution of the United States was composed to establish a government of strictly limited powers, decentralized and multiply divided, to ensure the maximum of freedom. That was the vision of the Founding Fathers. There would be no armies except the militia, which would have no functions but those of the police.

22:18The Americans would have no regal court, no pomp. There was no grand diplomacy because the Americans intended to mind their own business and not be involved in any of the intrigues to which the European statesmen were accustomed. Our fathers would have an economical government, even if grand people called it a cheap and parsimonious one. And taxes would be no greater than absolutely necessary to pay for such a small government. Citizen was to keep all the rest of his earnings, use them as he thought best for the happiness of himself and his family. But Spain, that was America. But Spain, Sumner says, chose a different road.

23:07A Spanish blessing goes, may God deny you peace, but give you glory. Well, they chose glory and empire. And the Spanish Empire was glorious. It was the first empire of which it was said that the sun never set on it, from one end of the world to the other. And with glory and empire and world power came the necessary concomitants, and there's an inevitability about these things, endless war and expenditures for war, putting down insurgencies like the revolt of the Dutch people, for instance, debt and inflation, confiscatory taxation, national bankruptcy, and in time decline and fall.

23:56And Sumner says that is the point where Spain is now, and the United States has entered onto that path. Sumner even mentioned the semantic trick that the American imperialists were trying to play. They called anyone who wanted to stick to the traditional American policy isolationists. You've heard the term? The term is now over a century old. It's argued by terminology. It's probably the best example of that, even better than calling the U.S. government's Military Arm, the Defense Department. Some Defense Department, after spending trillions of dollars, when 9-11 came, they couldn't even defend their own headquarters.

24:41And now anything the Pentagon wants to squander money on is called defense expenditure. But isolationism is an even better semantic fraud. And some are already in it as answer to. In a world of incessant fighting, devastation and death, who would not choose to isolate himself and his family and his country in the peaceful pursuit of happiness? But isolationist in the sense that the empire buildings use the term, how ridiculous is that? In the traditional American policy, Americans traded with peoples all over the world. Our ships went to China, to Europe, to Latin America, and we traded with anybody who was was anxious to trade with us, and most of them were.

25:27We could invest money anywhere in the world where people welcomed American capital, and most of them did. Sumner was a great social scientist, so naturally held to the laws of nature and human nature, just as valid for Americans as for anyone else. And if we go along a certain path, we have to take the consequences the way other people did. America seems to have chosen the way of empire, but, Sumner concluded, yet the scheme of a republic which our fathers formed was a glorious dream, which demands more than a word of respect and affection before it passes away, and that's what I believe.

26:13Finally, quoted a lot of great libertarians, I'm going to quote somebody who was definitely Hermann Göring was one of the top Nazi leaders, among those put on trial at Nuremberg. He was a very evil man, but he was a shrewd man when it came to politics. G.M. Gilbert was an American psychiatrist who interviewed Göring and the other defendants at Nuremberg. One One day, this is what Hermann Göring told him. Naturally, the common people don't want war, either in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, or for that matter in Germany.

27:00But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Now, Dr. Gilbert, a good American sheeple, retorted that in a democracy, people have a voice. They decide. In the United States, he added, only Congress can declare war. That was America in 1946. But Goering had the last word. Oh, that is all well and good, but voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to do the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is to tell them that they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and for exposing the country to danger.

27:49It always works the same way. The thing to keep in mind, I would say, is that we should remember that they are liars, that they consistently lie. Machiavelli knew that. He said, the people go by appearances rather than reality so the leaders can fool them into anything. There's one very, and they lie about big things, they lie about small things. One small example, except it's not a small example to his family, everybody remembers Jessica Lynch and the fabrication, the total lies on the front page of the Washington Post of this heroic woman, had to be of course a woman, who fought to the last cartridge and then she took out her bowie knife or whatever and had been The other poster child of their wars was Pat Tillman, a famous young football star.

29:06He had been drafted by some team. He was set to make a fortune. Instead, he volunteered to fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan as an army ranger. His brother, Kevin Tillman, volunteered at the same time. Pat Tillman was killed. The Pentagon story, as soon as they got the news, they burned his gear, they burned his diary, that is, the Pentagon did, and they told his family, they told the public, he'd been killed, again, fighting against the Taliban to the last cartridge, using his, whatever, but a real hero, a real American hero.

29:56Let's roll, okay? And it was only weeks afterwards that the Pentagon, which knew about it from the very start, told the parents what actually had happened. He'd been killed by so-called friendly fire. He'd been killed by his own men by some stupid mistake, the kind that always happens in war. Now, a few days ago, and his father denounced the Pentagon for lying to the family and having him buried under false pretenses, and now you can imagine how the mother and father feel about something like that. And now his brother, Kevin, who's left the Army Rangers, has denounced not only what they did to his brother Pat, his older brother Pat, but the whole war in Afghanistan, the whole war in Iraq, saying that all of it was based on a tissue, immense complex tissue of lies.

31:03So that's what I would leave with you. When you hear the imperialists and their apologists talk, and the media total accomplices, they just report. They're stenographers rather than reporters. They report that the government releases to them. When you hear all that, then just keep in mind they're all liars. Thank you.

31:33Thank you very much.