America: No longer the ruler of her own spirit

America has become the thing that our early leaders most feared and in more ways than one.

But today let us just consider the matter of foreign policy.

Our first President admonished us in his Farewell Address that our foreign policy should be “to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world.”

In his inaugural address, our second President, Thomas Jefferson, stated that American foreign policy was: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations-entangling alliances with none.”

In his July 4, 1821 speech to the U.S. House of Representatives, Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, who would himself become an American President, set forth America’s foreign policy under the Monroe Administration:

She [America] has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings . . . Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. . . . She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence; she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication . . . The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. . . . . She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit. . . . [America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. . . .

In 1823, President James Monroe could state that: “In the wars of the European powers, in matters relating to themselves, we have never taken part, nor does it comport with our policy, so to do. It is only when our rights are invaded, or seriously menaced that we resent injuries, or make preparations for our defense.”

But America now pursues a foreign policy that is precisely the opposite of what was described by these early Presidents. We are now entangled in the affairs of virtually every nation upon the face of the earth. We have indeed become the Dictatress of the World, but we are no longer the ruler of our own spirit.

Several years ago, Ron Paul noted that America has military personnel in 130 nations and some 900 bases overseas. Things have only worsened in recent years.

How did this come about?

It was but another rotten fruit of the un-Constitutional war that was made against the Southern States, a war that resulted in one consolidated Nation-State, as opposed to the voluntary union of free and independent states that had been envisioned by America’s founders.

General Robert E. Lee recognized this result of the war and in an 1866 letter to Great Britain’s Lord Acton, when he wrote:

I yet believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people, [is] not only essential to the adjustment and balance of the general system, but the safeguard to the continuance of a free government. . . . Whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.

Elevating yet another arrogant statist to the office of the President, be he or she a Republican or a Democrat, will only exasperate our current predicament. The only sane course is to separate and to go our own way. Perhaps God will see fit to show us the path to make this a reality. In the meantime we ought to simply withdraw our consent. Don’t fly the striped rag. Don’t pledge to it. Don’t serve in its Imperial Armed Forces. Don’t participate in its sham national elections.

As General Lee wrote in an 1863 order to his troops, acknowledging President Davis’ call for a day of fasting and prayer:

Let us humble ourselves before Him. Let us confess our many sins, and beseech Him to give us a higher courage, a purer patriotism, and more determined will; that He will hasten the time when war, with its sorrows and sufferings, shall cease, and that He will give us a name and place among the nations of the earth.

Deo Vindice!

TRUST GOD!
STAY IN THE FIGHT!
NEVER GIVE UP!
NEVER QUIT!



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