THE AMERICAN MANIFESTO

A Concerned Citizen

• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781638603870
• eBook ISBN: 9781638603887
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

There are no differences between the orient and the occident, there is only a difference between backwardness and modernity.

--Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

America is on the brink from the volatility of the disruption and unrest from 2020. The question that all Americans must ask is how did we get here and where do we go from here?

Chapter 1

On the Origins of the American Mindset

Western belief in the universality of Western culture suffers three problems: it is false, it is immoral, and it is dangerous.

—Samuel Huntington

I am going to begin this discussion with geography. Geography has shaped cultures throughout history. The United States is no exception.

The United States is one of the most blessed geographies on earth. Bordered by two oceans, the heartland further nestled in by two mountains, full of vast riverways, and a natural wall of islands that bear the brunt of severe storms before it moves inland. America can afford to rest easy. The United States will never have to worry about an invasion. It does not build artificial walls to keep out hurricane damage because it does not need to. The islands do that job for them. It does not invest in agricultural machinery to boost productivity because it does not need to. The arable lands are vast enough on their own. In addition, there are vast reserves of coal, oil, natural gas, gold, and silver. All of this causes the United States to develop a vast labor pool and become, without lifting much of a figure, the richest and most powerful nations on earth. Only China has a similar blessing in its geography.

And because of that, American culture fell into the same trap that China fell into. A culture of conservatism and complacency set in. With everything they wanted at their doorstep and everyone looking to them for everything, the Chinese sat back, got lazy, and never modernized their country. The legacy of this conservatism is that Mandarin is still written in a series of pictographs rather than an alphabet system.

This lack to progress and advance ultimately came to haunt the country, when, after cracking down on opium trade that was forced upon them by the British in order to balance the trade deficit of the East India Company, the superior British navy decisively defeated the inferior Chinese navy. Starting of what became known to the Chinese as the “century of humiliation.” Over time, more and more of China began to be chiseled out by foreign powers. But the leadership did not change. Society had become so enveloped into a culture of conservatism and complacency that they couldn’t get out of it. Eventually, the old society had to go, and a new one had to take its place. Which came in the form of Sun Yat-sen and his Xinhai revolution, overthrowing the Qing dynasty in 1911 and ending the mandate of heaven that had begun when Qin Shi Huang united the warring states of China in 221 BC. Following a warlord era, a Japanese invasion, a communist civil war, a state-sponsored famine, a cultural revolution, and the opening up of China to the world, China has learned from its previous mistakes. No longer will China slip into a culture of conservatism, complacency, and laziness. For China is modernizing, investing heavily in telecommunications, railways, artificial intelligence, and electrical projects.

And yet, what has the United States done? Nothing. Like China before, the United States’ culture of conservatism and complacency has come back to bite its own tail. Chinese manufacturing once became dead due to cheaper products from the United States. Now, American manufacturing became dead due to cheap products from China. Or as Donald Trump once put it, “It used to be that cars were made in Flint, and you couldn’t drink the water in Mexico. Now, cars are made in Mexico, and you can’t drink the water in Flint.”

But geography alone can’t dictate cultures or the rise and fall of nations. The authors Tim Marshall, Robert Kaplan, and Peter Zeihan may center their viewpoint on geography, but it is only a half-response. This, of course, does not disprove their works. I have read a lot of their books and am a big fan of their works and would recommend it to everyone reading this.

Indeed, this book centered more so around James Robinson and Why Nations Fail, but it is more than that.

Let us take, for example, the conservative revolution of the 1970s that swept both the United States and the West in general, coupled with the rise of Islamist movements in the Middle East. People like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were the top figures of the day, motivated as well by the rise of libertarian thinkers like Milton Freidman and Ayn Rand. Yet today, such figures are no longer seen as mainstream in the west. Britain’s labor party has moved from the neoliberal third way policies of Tony Blair to the more socialist policies of Jeremy Corbyn, now Keir Stramer. Yet in the United States, Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman’s ideas are still promoted even as the outside world no longer does. This showed itself when, at the annual general secretary speech at the UN, Donald Trump praised the ideas of Ayn Rand, only to be laughed out of the room by the other world leaders.

But why was it that Ayn Rand was flourished in the United States while being rejected elsewhere? Why is it that the New Deal Program was so thoroughly opposed to the point where the 1936 Republican Platform was one of abolishing Social Security? What is different about the United States that would explain this? To answer this question, we must look at history.

The first people to have arrived in what would become the United States were English colonists of the Virginia Colony, establishing Jamestown in 1607. However, as a lot of the activity that ultimately led to the outbreak of the American Revolution began in New England and more specifically, Massachusetts, I will be focusing more on the first people to settle in Massachusetts—the Pilgrims of Mayflower.

It is a common misconception that Thanksgiving commemorates the arrival of the Pilgrims to the shores of America and the establishment of Plymouth Colony. The modern-day holiday of Thanksgiving, celebrated every year on the last Thursday of November, only goes as far back as the Lincoln Administration. Thanksgiving was meant as a day of national unity in the midst of the Civil War, with the notion of it having to do with the Mayflower and Massosoit being a recent invention. Nonetheless, the image has permeated the American psyche to the point where many Native American Activist groups want the holiday banned. Not as a holiday of national unity but as a holiday commemorating the founders of America with their founding ideals. So what, then, were the ideals of the Plymouth colony?

The Pilgrims were religious Puritans, and a central point of their leaving England for the New World was to escape religious and sectarian violence that was wreaking havoc throughout England at this time. I will delve more into religion in the next chapter. Puritans, the most radical devotees of the Calvinist faith, believed not just in the standard hard labor of all the Protestant sects but that you have to endure a great deal of suffering in order to prove your worthiness into heaven, as predetermination was a central part of Calvinist faith. The Pilgrims were, as a result of their beliefs, in a continuous state of tensions with the crown. Ultimately showing itself when King Charles II, after ousting Oliver Cromwell and his Puritans from power in 1660 and restoring the monarchy, refused to come to the aid of the New England colonists when the Wampanoags, under Chief Metacomet, allied with other Native American tribes to expel the colonists from New England during King Philip’s War of 1675–1676.

This central tenet of Puritan ideology, that to achieve salvation in heaven, you must undergo trials and tribulations and not engage in sinful activities, forms the basis for the root cause of why America is a backward nation—the glorification of suffering and hardship. This central theme will be the main basis of the rest of the book. It is also this central thesis that explains why Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman were able to gain such popularity, and why they are still praised by many even as the rest of the world ridicules them. The glorification of suffering and hardship explains a lot as to why America has not been able to fix its social ills. While they may be nice things to have, as you have predetermined your allotted life, such notions should not be considered. While it would be nice to have healthcare provided to you without hesitation, a nice well-paying job without fear of outsourcing, good education, and a nice house, if you were conceived out of the lucky sperm club, your purpose in life is to toil through these things until your reach the zenith. What that zenith is and when you get there, no one really knows.

This attitude of “might makes right,” however, has its problems. Indeed, it is no coincidence that countries that promote egalitarian values have the strongest social safety nets. Indeed, a culture of “might makes right” promotes the idea of people falling through the cracks. This is shown through the catastrophic economic fallout of coronavirus. The reason why so many people suffered is because of cultures that not only allows it but glorifies it. Indeed, there is also a historical precedent for this. No civilization embraced the attitude of “might makes right” than the Roman Empire. Indeed, it is also no coincidence that nations with more egalitarian values have less corruption than nations with patriarchal attitudes.

Rome is often viewed by America and the rest of the Western world as the ideal form of government. Yet one simple question is never asked. If the Roman republic was so wonderful, why is it that it collapsed into an empire? Why did the democratic institutions gave way to an oligarchy where the wealthy stopped paying their taxes? And the democratic systems devolved into power, being centered into a hands of a small elite, first civil war between Marius and Sulla, then the triumvirate between Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Marcus Licinnius Crassus; till eventually only Octavius was left standing after defeating Cleopatra and Marc Anthony in the Battle of Actium and dissolved the republic to become the first Roman emperor? Rome should be studied, but it should be studied as a warning. Indeed, I fear that once again the die has been cast as a new Caesar has crossed the Rubicon.

It is through this prism that we are able to find the answer to another question: Why does America have a massive problem with race relations? As I write, protests are erupting over Geroge Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake, and many others; African Americans who have fallen victim to being in police custody. The answers given by people have been widely different. Some people have said individual attitudes. But that doesn’t explain racial gaps in wealth, standard of living, healthcare quality, quality of education, and more. Others have said it is purely a systemic thing, and that to end racism, we must end the system. This, however, is also flawed, and it doesn’t address people who hold white supremacist views. Some will say it’s both. Yet that, too, doesn’t address people who, despite not having a racist bone in their body, would not really do anything to change the system. And even these three explanations are missing something.

Something that becomes a lot more evident when you factor in the idea of “predetermination.” There are white people out there who are concerned about the overreaches of government and terrified about the prospects of government power yet denounce the Black Lives Matters protests. Why? Because of the notions of predetermination. Just as how the allotted position in life for the white man is to not have healthcare provided for him by the state. It is the allotted role in life for the Black man to have to live in a rough neighborhood and have a few run-ins with cops. In essence, “I have accepted that I will undergo hardships in my life, why can’t those negroes do the same?” Indeed, those who claim to not be racist yet still cling on to this set of beliefs may need to question as to whether or not they truly are racist.

Following the American Revolution, America underwent a period of industrialization and Westward expansion. As a result of the Civil War, the United States suffered a massive labor shortage. Fortunately for the United States, the Irish Potato Famine, the Revolutions of 1848, and the unification of Germany and Italy caused severe socio-political disruption in Europe that caused floods of people to immigrate from Europe to the United States. At the same time, Chinese were brought in to work on the railroads. All of this brought about a new fundamental sentiment in America. The French Revolution and the Latin American Wars of Independence were inspired by the American Revolution. Later on, Ho Chi Minh himself would cite the Declaration of Independence. All of these people were immigrating to the United States in droves, citing America as a “land of opportunity.” Meanwhile, no one was emigrating from the United States. What was it about the United States that made so many people want to come here? Is there something inherently unique about the United States? The result of divine intervention? Eventually, this speculation was answered in the form of Frederick Jackson Turner in his 1893 book, The Significance of the Frontier in American History, which brought about the idea of the Frontier Thesis. That it was the frontier that established American democracy, and the pioneers of the frontier gave rise to the American folk hero, people like Ethan Allen, Davy Crockett, and Daniel Boone.

Two main consequences occurred as a result of Frederick Jackson Turner and his frontier thesis. First, it solidified amongst Americans the notion that, yes, there is something inherently special about the United States in an idea that would forever be known as “American exceptionalism.” The reason why this was able to flourish so rapidly was largely simple. Trade and commerce foster an exchange of ideas, and thus, a change of social attitudes. European nations constantly engaged in trade and commerce amongst themselves. So ideas, such as the reformation, the enlightenment, and the democracy were able to spread as they complemented and critiqued each other and themselves. But America has no such trade. It had no need to look outward. Everyone was flocking to America.

Now, this notion was flawed on a simple premise—it wasn’t true. Mainly being that America was not the only nation experiencing floods of immigrants during this time. All of the New World nations were experiencing waves of immigrants. Mexico had a large influx of German immigrants. Argentina had a large wave of Italians. Peru had a large wave of immigrants from Japan.

But the second consequence had a much bigger effect. It instilled in the American mindset the idea of “great man history.” That what made America possible was only the result of a few great men. Some of these are founders, like Washington and Jefferson. Others are presidents like Lincoln and Grant, but no one was more affected than people of big business. People like Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, and many others. As a result, the big businessman became people to look up to. It was men like Morgan and Vanderbilt that made America possible. Everyone wanted to be like Rockefeller.

In it came the idea of “you built that.” That one should take pride in one’s own achievements. Now, there is nothing in...

Table of contents

• On the Origins of the American Mindset
• On the Nature of the Church
• On the Role of the Government
• On the Social Contract
• On the Concept of Freedom
• On the Revolutionary Nature of the American Revolution