The Imperial United States of America: Its Constitution and the Truth of Its History

by Constantine Rebêlillon

Exclusive to STR

August 29, 2008

Among some “libertarian” circles, the ones that force real libertarians to add on otherwise redundant adjectives, it can become all too common to hear about the joys of “limited government” and how miraculous it would be if only it were possible to get people to “obey the Constitution.” Even those who supposedly understand the US Constitution’s flaws pay great reverence to its architects, its premises, and its body; however, their complaint, of course, is that it is not followed, but is that cliché even accurate? Not by any estimate of contextual history.  

Sadly though, context, history, and reason seem to escape most American conservatives when it comes to the mythical, bedtime stories of the founding of their precious little empire. Too wrapped up in their fairytales of wooden teeth, cherry trees, Philadelphia, and Benjamin Franklin, Americans readily forget about the genocide of Native tribes resulting from US federal ordinances aiming to expand an “infant empire,” as George Washington would put it. Of course though, Americans don’t really care about brown people; moreover, the fact that the US treated Native tribes as conquered peoples, taking their land and killing them off as they pleased, probably won’t even resonate with a Ron Paul supporter. After all, the US Constitution was divinely written, right? Who cares if slavery was federally legitimized by defining black people as 2/5ths less human than a Congress full of rich, white men? Shays’ Rebellion, you say? Whiskey taxes and other assaults on the rights of the poor by the rich, you complain? Bah! No, decent, card-carrying member of the Church of the Constitution cares about that! Why should they? After all, no wealthy lawyers, tycoon generals, banking lobbyists, professional bureaucrats, or privileged, Anglican clergymen would ever die in a famine; no, only poor people and minorities.  

Absolutely, though the American Revolution was great, truly a miracle and one of the single defining moments of a generational pro-liberty movement, it was lost, once and forever, in the United States with the establishment of the counter-revolutionary Constitution.  

Clearly then, the Constitution is a disgusting document built and facilitated by disgusting counter-revolutionaries. Understanding this though, some still fall into the conservative trap, which sings squeakily and stubbornly, “the U.S. Constitution is not perfect . . . . But it is a pretty good [contrivance], I think, and it defines and limits the scope of government. When we get into the habit of disregarding it . . . we do so at our peril,” (67). Oh, yes! A cliché so often repeated by the conservatives and reformists that worship their precious Constitution like a golden calf.  

“Well, at least it kind-of-sort-of limits the government,” they repeat, not realizing the pitiful caricature they paint for themselves.  

Here, the pro-liberty movement comes to yet another crossroad, leaving radicals and fellow-travelers split in two between honesty and heresy, fortitude and fear, courage and compromise; though the horse of the corrupted comes to the stream, it will not yet take a drink. Though the compromised understand the Constitution is inferior to the libertarian society, they do not understand that the Constitution is inferior to most contemporary societies; indeed, the Constitution is inferior, period.  

Put aside the genocides and holocausts of entire Native tribes, slavery, paternalistic hierarchy, religious persecution of Catholics, the generally regressive tax system of the US, the unequal burden placed upon the common southerner over the wealthy elites around the states, and all those other topics that the privileged WASPs don’t care enough about to even mention in their state-sponsored textbooks. Put aside the American empire and the millions murdered in its name since 1789, most Americans couldn’t give less of a damn about Catholics, poor people, common southerners, oppressed women, or brown people anyways. For even in the terms that conservatives do care about, the United States , now and in its “constitutional days,” is simply an intolerable evil for all and shouldn’t be placed on a pedestal by any self-respecting lover of liberty.  

For example, gun restrictions, bans, laws, and regulations – and even restrictions on the possession of dogs for blacks and “Papists” – have always been present through the history of the United States . As Saul Cornell points out in the above link, though the United States Constitution does technically protect the right of militiamen to possess military arms, it does not protect the right for individuals to possess arms for self-defense and especially not for overthrowing a tyrannical government, as so many paleo-conservatives wish to misleadingly suggest.  Acknowledging the very real fact that the Constitution does not in any tangible way guarantee an individual’s right to protect his or her family without being coercively regulated and limited by the state to the point where a de facto ban on guns becomes enacted by de jure regulations of them, as in the Washington DC area, it becomes painfully clear that when another person appeals to the history of the United States as a paradisio where, “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of [Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness], it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it,” that particular person possesses nothing more than a great delusion called wishful thinking.  

Showing that even the beloved American gun has always been attacked by the culture of the US government, then, it must be stated that though many paleo-conservatives –wrongly labeling themselves as libertarians – would love to be able to go back to the Constitution, their reasons are founded upon no evidence. Sad as it may seem, the fact is that much of the coercive and immoral actions of the United States government are based upon a document that makes their laws ambiguously constitutional at best and perfectly within the framework of constitutional standards at worst. By implications of the purposefully made inexplicit general welfare and commerce clauses, the US Constitution, far from limiting the powers of government, merely serves to justify future tyrannies and to render the public mute on matters of revolution and protest.  

Understanding that the Constitution is no friend, then, what can be done to change man’s sad state of existence? Well, since the ideas expressed in the Declaration of Independence, though nice, are ignored and irrelevant to politicians and the body of historical American supporters feeling that, “in monarchies the crime of treason and rebellion may admit of being pardoned or lightly punished, but the man who dares rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death,” one must first accept that the United States of America is and always has been a cesspool for tyranny and injustice. As such, the person living in the United States who burns for freedom, the person who would die for his liberty, uncompromised and complete, must accept his place in the fight against his government as a rebel and an anti-American. After all, the Imperial United States of America is and always has been the parent of the “American perspective.” No claim to going back to what the revolution was founded upon will justify calling oneself an American – America was not the revolution; freedom was the revolution and America is what it lost to. Knowing where one stands in an alliance of ideology being crucial to pushing forward with liberation on a micro and a macro level, cutting all ties to any remnants of “patriotism” and the chauvinistic attitude of the American exceptionalist is an essential first step to growing as an individual, a rebel, and a revolutionary. Indeed, only when one becomes a revolutionary can one begin to participate in a revolution; in this revolution, the enemies are clear and undeniable – the enemies are the Imperial United States of America, the US Constitution, and every government and every document standing around the world today.  

Remember, no Constitution, no illusory documents of history, no political appendage of the system can be expected to defend or regain freedom for individuals wishing it. Only by a man’s own hands can he forge his sustenance; only by our own hands may we ever defeat tyranny.  Until and unless libertarians begin to recognize this fact, they will continue to waste time, running around in the same circle they’ve been doing since the 18^th Century; until men begin to forge their desires with their own hands, they will continue to decay in a state of poverty.