[This essay first appeared in the American Mercury in March 1939.]
Along with I can evaluate, the basic mindset of Americans who are at all thinking about foreign affairs is among awe, combined with distaste, displeasure, or scary, according to the specific observer’s capacity for emotional enjoyment. Maybe I ought to shade this statement a little in order to keep the safe side, and say that this is the most normally expressed mindset.
All our institutional voices– journalism, pulpit, online forum– are pitched to the note of surprised indignation at one or another stage of the existing goings-on in Europe and Asia. This leads me to believe that our individuals usually are seeing with wonder along with repugnance certain conspicuous actions of numerous foreign States; for example, the barbarous habits of the German State towards a few of its own people; the unflinching despotism of the Soviet Russian State; the ruthless imperialism of the Italian State; the “betrayal of CzechoSlovakia” by the British and French States; the savagery of the Japanese State; the brutishness of the Chinese State’s mercenaries; and so on, here or there, all over the globe– this sort of thing is showing itself to be against our individuals’s grain, and they are speaking up about it in wrathful surprise.
I am cordially with them on every point however one. I am with them in repugnance, horror, indignation, disgust, however not in astonishment. The history of the State being what it is, and its testament being as invariable and eloquent as it is, I am obliged to say that the naive tone of surprise wherewith our people complain of these matters strikes me as a pretty unfortunate reflection on their intelligence. Suppose someone were impolite sufficient to ask the gruff question, “Well, what do you expect?”– what rational response could they offer? I know of none.
Polite or rude, that is simply the concern which should be put whenever a story of State villainy appears in the news. It ought to be tossed at our public day after day, from every newspaper, periodical, lecture platform, and radio station in the land; and it ought to be backed up by a basic attract history, an easy invite to take a look at the record. The British State has offered the Czech State down the river by a despicable trick; very well, be as disgusted and angry as you like, however don’t be astonished; what would you expect?– just have a look at the British State’s record! The German State is maltreating fantastic masses of its individuals, the Russian State is holding a purge, the Italian State is grabbing area, the Japanese State is buccaneering along the Asiatic Coast; awful, yes, however for Heaven’s sake don’t lose your head over it, for what would you anticipate?– take a look at the record!
That is how every public discussion of these realities should run if Americans are ever going to grow up into an adult attitude towards them. Likewise, in order to keep down the terrific American sin of self-righteousness, every public presentation ought to draw the lethal parallel with the record of the American State. The German State is maltreating a minority, simply as the American State did after 1776; the Italian State get into Ethiopia, just as the American State broke into Mexico; the Japanese State kills off the Manchurian people in wholesale lots, just as the American State did the Indian tribes; the British State practices large-scale carpetbaggery, like the American State after 1864; the imperialist French State massacres native civilians by themselves soil, as the American State performed in pursuit of its imperialistic policies in the Pacific, and so on.
In this way, perhaps, our people may enter their heads some glimmering of the reality that the State’s criminality is nothing brand-new and absolutely nothing to be wondered at. It started when the first predatory group of men clustered together and formed the State, and it will continue as long as the State exists worldwide, due to the fact that the State is essentially an anti-social organization, fundamentally criminal. The idea that the State came from to serve any type of social function is entirely unhistorical. It originated in conquest and confiscation– that is to state, in criminal activity. It stemmed for the function of keeping the division of society into an owning-and-exploiting class and a propertyless dependent class– that is, for a criminal purpose.
No State understood to history originated in any other manner, or for any other function. Like all predatory or parasitic organizations, its very first impulse is that of self-preservation. All its business are directed first towards protecting its own life, and, second, towards increasing its own power and expanding the scope of its own activity. For the sake of this it will, and routinely does, commit any criminal offense which circumstances make practical. In the last analysis, what is the German, Italian, French, or British State now in fact doing? It is destroying its own individuals in order to maintain itself, to boost its own power and eminence, and extend its own authority; and the American State is doing the same thing to the utmost of its opportunities.
What, then, is a little matter like a treaty to the French or British State? Simply a scrap of paper– Bethmann-Hollweg explained it exactly. Why be astonished when the German or Russian State murders its citizens? The American State would do the exact same thing under the same circumstances. In truth, eighty years ago it did murder a terrific a number of them for no other crime worldwide however that they did not want to live under its guideline any longer; and if that is a criminal offense, then the colonists led by G. Washington were solidified criminals and the Fourth of July is nothing however a cutthroat’s vacation.
The weaker the State is, the less power it has to dedicate crime. Where in Europe today does the State have the best rap sheet? Where it is weakest: in Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Sweden, Monaco, Andorra. Yet when the Dutch State, for example, was strong, its criminality was terrible; in Java it massacred 9,000 persons in one morning which is considerably ahead of Hitler’s record or Stalin’s. It would not do the like today, for it might not; the Dutch people do not offer it that much power, and would not stand for such conduct. When the Swedish State was an excellent empire, its record, state from 1660 to 1670, was afraid. What does all this mean however that if you do not want the State to imitate a criminal, you should deactivate it as you would a criminal; you should keep it weak. The State will constantly be criminal in percentage to its strength; a weak State will constantly be as criminal as it can be, or dare be, but if it is kept down to the correct limit of weakness– which, by the method, is a large offer lower limit than individuals are led to think– its criminality may be safely got on with.
So it strikes me that rather of sweating blood over the iniquity of foreign States, my fellow-citizens would do a good deal much better on their own to make certain that the American State is not strong enough to carry out the like iniquities here. The stronger the American State is permitted to grow, the greater its record of criminality will grow, according to its chances and temptations. If, then, rather of devoting energy, time, and money to fending off wholly imaginary and fanciful threats from crooks countless miles away, our individuals turn their patriotic fervor loose on the only source from which danger can proceed, they will be doing their full duty by their nation.
2 able and practical American publicists– Isabel Paterson, of the New York City Herald Tribune, and W.J. Cameron, of the Ford Motor Company– have lately called our public’s attention to the terrific truth that if you give the State power to do something for you, you offer it a specific equivalent of power to do something to you. I want every editor, publicist, instructor, preacher, and lecturer would keep hammering that fact into American heads until they get it nailed quick there, never ever to come loose. The State was organized in this country with power to do all examples for individuals, and the people in their short-sighted stupidity, have been contributing to that power since. After 1789, John Adams stated that, up until now from being a democracy of a democratic republic, the political company of the country was that of “a monarchical republic, or, if you will, a limited monarchy”; the powers of its President were far greater than those of “an avoyer, a consul, a podesta, a doge, a stadtholder; nay, than a king of Poland; nay, than a king of Sparta.” If all that held true in 1789– and it held true– what is to be stated of the American State at the present time, after a century and a half of stable centralization and constant increments of power?
Power, for instance, to “assist service” by auctioning off concessions, subsidies, tariffs, land grants, franchises; power to help business by ever intruding policies, supervisions, different kinds of control. All this power was freely given; it brought with it the equivalent power to do things to service; and see what an outlaw of sharking political careerists are doing to organization now! Power to afford “relief” to proletarians; and see what the State has done to those proletarians now in the way of systematic debauchery of whatever dignity and self-reliance they might have had! Power in this manner, power that way; and all eventually utilized versus the interests of individuals who surrendered that power on the pretext that it was to be used for those interests.
Numerous now believe that with the rise of the “totalitarian” State the world has actually gone into upon a new age of barbarism. It has not. The totalitarian State is only the State; the kind of thing it does is only what the State has always done with unfailing regularity, if it had the power to do it, wherever and whenever its own aggrandizement made that example practical. Give any State like power hereafter, and put it in like situations, and it will do precisely the same example. The State will invariably aggrandize itself, if just it has the power, initially at the expenditure of its own people, and then at the expenditure of anyone else in sight. It has constantly done so, and always will.
The idea that the State is a social institution, and that with a great upright man like Mr. Chamberlain at the head of it, or a lovely individual like Mr. Roosevelt, there can be no question about its being honorably and nobly handled– all this is so much sticky flypaper. Male in that position usually make a bargain of their honor, and a few of them undoubtedly might have some (though if they had any I can not understand their letting themselves be put in that position) but the maker they are running will operate on rails which are laid just one method, which is from crime to criminal offense. In the old days, the partition of CzechoSlovakia or the taking-over of Austria would have been arranged by rigmarole among a couple of extremely sleek gentlemen in stiff shirts ornamented with great ribbons. Hitler just arranged it the method old Frederick arranged his share in the very first partition of Poland; he organized the addition of Austria the way Louis XIV organized that of Alsace. There is basically of a style, maybe, in the method these things are done, however the point is that they always come out precisely the very same in the end.
In addition, the idea that the treatment of the “democratic” State is any less criminal than that of the State under any other expensive name, is rubbish. The nation is now being surfeited with journalistic trash about our terrific sibling democracy, England, its fine democratic federal government, its large beneficent present for ruling subject peoples, and so on; but does anybody ever search for the rap sheet of the British State? The bombardment of Copenhagen; the Boer War; the Sepoy Disobedience; the starvation of Germans by the post-Armistice blockade; the massacre of locals in India, Afghanistan, Jamaica; the work of Hessians to exterminate American colonists. What is the difference, ethical or real, in between Kitchener’s democratic prisoner-of-war camp and the totalitarian prisoner-of-war camp kept by Herr Hitler? The totalitarian general Badoglio is a quite hard-boiled bro, if you like, but how about the democratic generalO’Dwyer and Governor Eyre? Any of the three stands up pretty well beside our own democratic virtuoso, Hell Roaring Jake Smith, in his treatment of the Filipinos; and you can’t say fairer than that.
As for the British State’s talent for a kindly and generous colonial administration, I shall not rake up old scores by citing the expense of particulars set forth in the Declaration of Independence; I will think about India only, not even going into matters like the Kaffir war or the Wairau occurrence in New Zealand. Our democratic British cousins in India in the Eighteenth Century must have discovered their trade from Pizarro and Cortez. Edmund Burke called them “birds of prey and passage.” Even the directors of the East India Company admitted that “the large fortunes obtained in the inland trade have been acquired by a scene of the most oppressive and oppressive conduct that was ever known in any age or country.” Describing a journey, Warren Hastings wrote that “the majority of the petty towns and serais were deserted at our method”; individuals ran into the woods at the simple sight of a white man. There was the iniquitous salt monopoly; there was extortion all over, practiced by resourceful rascals in league with a corrupt cops; there was tax which confiscated nearly half the products of the soil.
If it be stated that Britain was not a sibling democracy in those days, and has since reformed, one may well ask how much of the reformation is because of situations, and how much to a change of heart. Besides, the Black-and-Tans remained in our day; so was the post-Armistice blockade; General O’Dwyer’s massacre was not more than a dozen years ago; and there are plenty alive who keep in mind Kitchener’s prisoner-of-war camp.
No, “democratic” State practice is nothing basically than State practice. It does not differ from Marxist State practice, Fascist State practice, or any other. Here is the Golden Rule of sound citizenship, the first and biggest lesson in the study of politics: you get the exact same order of criminality from any State to which you enable to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the comparable power to do things to you. A citizenry which has found out that one brief lesson has however bit more delegated learn.
Removing the American State of the huge power it has obtained is a full-time job for our people and a stirring one; and if they address it correctly they will have no energy to spare for combating communism, or for disliking Hitler, or for stressing over South America or Spain, or for anything whatever, other than what goes on right here in the United States.