Given the ongoing war between the United States and Russia in Ukraine, it’s natural for Americans to conclude that Russia is our enemy. Not so. Our enemy is instead the US national-security establishment — i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA — the entity that is responsible for the war in Ukraine and that is destroying our lives, liberties, and well-being here at home.
Our American ancestors would have understood this phenomenon. If the Constitution had called into existence a national-security state form of government, our ancestors would never have accepted it. That would have meant that the United States would have continued operating under the Articles of Confederation, a type of governmental structure without a standing army.
Our American ancestors loathed standing armies, which was the term they used to describe what we call today a national-security state. They understood that big, permanent military establishments are always the enemies of the citizenry. They understood that standing armies or national-security states end up destroying the lives, liberties, and prosperity of the citizenry.
That’s why the Constitution called into existence a limited-government republic, one whose powers were few and limited and that had only a relatively small, basic army. That’s why America lived without a national-security state for more than 150 years.
Today, things are totally inverted. Americans love the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, which is, in actuality, one great big military-intelligence entity that is divided into three wings. Americans don’t see this enormous permanent entity as their enemy or as a grave threat to their lives, liberties, and well-being, as Americans did at the nation’s founding and for the next 150 years. Today’s Americans see the national-security state as their friend, ally, and protector that keeps them safe from all those scary creatures in the world.
But what today’s Americans don’t realize is that it is their very own national-security state that gins up those scary creatures in order to have Americans view their national-security state as their friend and protector.
Hellbound and Down 