The Dialectical Development of the Concept of United States

   The concept of a union of states with limited sovereign powers becomes rooted in world history by the American Constitution of 1787-90 which established united states on the east coast of America. The concept in an altered form was adopted by Napoleon since he tried with French military power to unite the states and empires of Europe. He also supported the American union by selling President Jefferson the Louisiana territory making room wholly or partially for 14 new American states. Using the Hegelian model of dialectical development, we must look however for a negation of the concept and then for a negation of the negation which will be an affirmation. After the ratification of the American Constitution by 13 states, Hamilton and the Federalist Party call for a central bank and the Supreme Court makes decisions that increase the central power of the government in Washington to try to make the American union work like a nation-state. But this is just the beginning of the negation. President  Lincoln declares his federal government in 1861 “national”, forces 4 more states to secede from the union, and makes  war against one group of American states using another group. This is the full negation but in the Hegelian sense it maintains the original concept even in the negation because Lincoln must declare, in order to motivate northern soldiers, that they are fighting to preserve the union. He both disunited the union and held it together in a new form of unity. His revolution aiming to further reduce the sovereignty of the states could not prevent the admission of 12 additional states to the union by 1914. By then the Federal Government had become de facto the imperial ruler of 48 states but they retained enough sovereign powers to function as democratic states and the Washington government was still far from being the fully sovereign government of a nation-state. Because the nation-states of Europe in 1914 are independent and sovereign they are incapable of unifying like American states. The First World War in Europe so shocks the American president Woodrow Wilson that he boldly opposes the omnipresence of independent national states in Europe by championing a League of Nations with 2 of his 14 points for it modeled after the political status of the united states in America. This is the third stage of the original concept of united states. Wilson’s league is doomed to failure because the nation-states are inflexible and the peoples in the various European colonies do not yet live in their own states. The bourgeois European states throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have nevertheless been unifying the world by colonization. They continue this form of worldwide unification after the disaster of the First World War. In the second disastrous world war caused by nation-states, two unions of states, the Russian and American unions, united with the British Empire, the most successful European-style unity of peoples, win the war. Postwar, the European colonies are decolonized creating for the first time independent states worldwide capable of being united worldwide. Now  at last  the concept introduced to world history in America in 1787-90 arrives at the third stage of its dialectical development. America uses its power to win the cold war and bring into history a worldwide union of all the peoples of the world in states with the government in Washington at its political center either de facto or de jure. Many states are still not members of a union of states but they are at least already part of a de facto world union. In addition to the original American union now grown to 50 states, we have the European Union of 28 states who have accepted in an altered form President Wilson’s proposal in 1919 for a League of Nations. Counting the United States and the European Union, we have a total worldwide of 78 united states whereas when the concept began in 1787-90 there were only 13 united states.

   Globalization is the ground for a new concept taking birth now at the beginning of the 21st century. This concept can only aim at a further unification of the world by the construction of a united states of the world uniting all the states of the world in one union. The first unmistakable evidence that this new concept is already at work in history is the inability of many nation-states, old and new, to maintain a peaceful equilibrium among their citizens and to develop their economies prosperously in a globalized world economy. Some nation-states are collapsing before our eyes.They all need to assure a democratic government and economic prosperity for their citizens by becoming new states of a de jure world union of states. No doubt the difficulties of establishing de jure this world union of states would be lessened if the government in Washington would recognize publicly for the whole world to hear that it is not a state, that it is not located in a state, that it does not have fully sovereign powers, that its Constitution gives its Congress the right to admit new states, and that it is thus the prime candidate in the world to bring a new revolutionary concept to birth in history for the good of humanity by transforming itself to the central government of a worldwide de jure union of states.

Daniel McNeill

Loyalty To Washington

   If we Americans live in a nation that already existed way back in the times of the 17th century New England puritans (as our history books say), then we would certainly have revolted by words and actions against the Supreme Court’s decision that giving unlimited money to politicians is a form of free speech. The seat of our nation, if it existed, would be the government in Washington and the Supreme Court would have eliminated representation in the national government for citizens seeking support for their ordinary, everyday interests. This would be intolerable in any democratic nation anywhere and the Supreme Court has simply driven home to us the point that we never were a nation, that we are not one now, that we are instead a union of fifty states unified by a central government that also makes it its business to use its power to unify globally all the other states in the world. Washington is the new Rome. That is the Supreme Court’s message. The laws that our elected representatives in Congress pass are primarily based on the needs of both American and foreign corporations for their operations both in America and worldwide. However these market-oriented actions by our congressmen and senators paid richly by lobbyists representing rich interests are also in our vital interest. We Americans cannot and should not stop Washington from supporting with its many institutions and its enormous diplomatic and military power global economic and political development. We know it is in our vital economic interest that everyone in the world develop economically because our own continued development is an integral part of the process. The Supreme Court is right. Washington is the new Rome. Without it there would be no global economy and we along with everyone else in the world would be threatened by economic chaos. Money paid to Washington politicians is a form of free speech. We must be loyal to Washington not because it is the head of a nation but because it is the head of the world. What it does with the trillions of dollars it spends worldwide is a noble revolutionary form of free speech and we should help it any way we can to keep it talking loudly.

Daniel McNeill

An Unique Political System

   America never was able to become a nation because its central government is not a state. President Lincoln declared in his first inaugural address on March 4 1861 that his government was national. That was the start of his political revolution. The war that he began and won using a northern group of states against a southern group transferred more power to the central government. After the war new territories opened up in the west that could have become colonies instead of states if the Washington government had been itself a state. The European colonies were all created by national states. The sovereignty of a nation was transferred directly to each colony by appointing a governor as its sovereign. Washington was neither fully sovereign nor a state and as a result did not possess a sovereign power that could be transferred. Article lV section 3 of the Constitution gives Congress power to admit new states. Washington therefore organized the new territories by admitting them as states which automatically gave them limited sovereignty. That was the beginning of Washington’s destiny as a worldwide unifying power. From then on it either penetrated foreign states and forced them to adopt its political and economic values or else it admitted states to its union of states with limited sovereignty. Along with its reach worldwide for power it constantly sought more power in America over the united states. It gained power by amending the Constitution to further limit the powers of the states but this still was far from the attainment of full sovereignty. Americans in the period just after the Civil War understood the difficulty involved in changing America to a nation. They wanted as little as possible to do with Washington and they considered it a grave moral weakness, almost a sinful condition. if anyone expected anything from it. More than 20 million European and Asian immigrants arrived between 1880 and 1920. They came from nations and believed they had settled in a nation. That helped Washington’s push towards nationhood but it remained nonetheless the powerful government of a union of states without being itself a state. The 14th amendment to the Constitution says that an American is a citizen of the state where he resides and also a citizen of the United States. We have the powerful political freedom of double citizenship but we cannot ever live in a fully sovereign state or ever be citizens of a central government that is a state. It is impossible under such circumstances to believe we live in a nation. Our loyalty to Washington should be unbreakable but however strong our attachment to it nothing can make it a nation like other nations.

Magna Carta in 1215 began the long struggle in the English-speaking world to establish by law the individual rights of citizens but neither England nor any other nation ever struck a powerful blow against sovereignty itself. The American Constitution slices sovereignty into two parts. The  federal government has its part and the states have theirs. Except in military and diplomatic matters, where Washington is supreme, sovereignty is exercised piecemeal. We can challenge and possibly overturn in federal and state courts every law passed by our 51 legislatures. Our 51 partially sovereign governments are all split into three branches, executive, legislative and judicial. Only a political party with a majority in the federal legislature and all state legislatures can act with something close to full sovereignty. Otherwise everything happens politically in thousands of governments, local, county, state, and federal exercising each only pieces of our sovereignty. Americans should be proud of their unique political system that allows them to live free from the merciless dead weight of absolute national sovereignty. If they need a name for their system, they should stop naming it a nation and look at its name printed on our money: The United States.

Daniel McNeill

Why Hillary Clinton?

     Anyone from anywhere with money can buy power in Congress and the power our elected representatives have is marginal unless they use it making laws that aid big business. When the Supreme Court ruled that donating unlimited money to influence politicians was a form of free speech, that was the end of a certain America. In the new America we can no longer believe that Congress is structured to respond politically to the needs of the average American. Hillary Clinton is the presidential candidate with the political experience and the intelligence necessary to try to forge a new identity for Americans in new radically changed political circumstances.

   This identity can never be authentic unless it relates directly to the foreign policy of our government. What is radically new is that we face on the one hand the scourge of terrorism and on the other hand huge super nations, China, the German-led European Union, Russia, Japan. Brasil, Mexico and India. In the next 8 years the seven will be prowling all over the globe seeking opportunities for profits by using advanced technologies ever becoming more advanced. Seven blocks of economic power are beside us in the world and yet we must still use at least 590 billion dollars of our national wealth every year to keep the world safe for economic development.

   Sixty years ago when we were the most advanced economy in the world it made sense to use our wealth and power to police the world so that undeveloped and poorer states could develop economically as democracies. Now we continue with this foreign policy unchanged even though we have succeeded and states using our technologies have advanced in many cases as extensively as ourselves. On the one hand, we must continue policing the world because not doing it would provoke a worldwide disaster comparable in ancient history to the fall of the Roman Empire. On the other hand, we possess the political structure that if used intelligently can give Americans the new identity they need and can give the world the advanced political structure that it needs. We alone have succeeded in creating a highly sophisticated union of fifty states. The new identity for Americans should be as members of a union of states and the structure of our union should be extended worldwide by inviting all states in the world to become states of our union. Most candidates for president hide behind nationalistic slogans promising to make America a richer, more powerful nation. This is hogwash. We have been a de facto world government since the end of the Second World War. We must continue to be a world government and the only rational and good way to do this is by making Washington de jure the central government of a world union of states. No one but Hillary Clinton possesses the intelligence, the experience and the heart to begin to make a new identity for Americans and a new necessary identity for the world possible.

Daniel McNeill

  

The Empty Promises of Trump and Sanders

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders are surging in the polls because they talk as though as president they would be the head of a nation. Sure, if all the power in the US ran in thousands of lines from all over the states like the tentacles of an octopus directly to the president, we could  believe Trump might “build a wall” around the country or Sanders might actually be for “free college” as a realistic possibility. The president has powerful but limited powers. He is the head of the largest military in the world and could order the army to “build a wall” around the US but we know that is not going to happen and anyway Congress would not vote to fund it. The Congress, not the president, possesses the commerce power. Bernie Sanders as president could not get a $15-an-hour minimum wage from Congress let alone “free college”. Why is it that we Americans can not face the simple truth that we do not live in a nation? It is not a bad or evil condition. It is in fact a very good condition and one that we thoroughly enjoy. The president has serious worldwide political, economic and moral responsibilities but the Constitution never instituted his office to make him president of a nation. George Washington described himself as a “referee” when he accepted the presidency. The federal government’s limited powers are cut in three between the President, the Congress and the Supreme Court. New York city will try to pass a $15.00-an-hour law but it can be challenged in courts and overturned by the Supreme Court. Would this be on the part of the court the act of a nation? A nation works the other way around. It sends down laws from the top that are valid for everyone absolutely within four borders north, east,west and south. We don’t have four international borders touching most of the 48 states south of Canada.  Alaska has four more international borders and so does Hawaii. We have 50 legal jurisdictions in the 50 states of our union and that is why our name is The United States. We could get a lot more good things done politically if we were a nation but it would be positively frightening to be ordered around by the bureaucrats of a central government as in all the states of the world with citizens unhappily locked up behind the borders of a nation.

Daniel McNeill

Human Statues and Real Experience

   Few philosophical movements have lost their elan as fast as existentialism and few have proved so eternally essential as bourgeois idealism. The philosopher Sartre believed everything happens as an escape from a perfect form of being that does not exist. We are none of us essential. We can never experience perfect being. We are beings arising from nothingness  condemned to be inessential beings. Anything that seems to us essential in our experience, for Sartre, is a bourgeois illusion, bad faith. He wrote of his grandfather,  a nineteenth-century style idealist: “He loved those short instances of eternity where he became his own statue.” Do we ever in 2015 struggle against the thoughts in our minds that make us our own statues? Never! We are perfectly sure of ourselves. We must be who we are because idealized thought tells us we are who we are. We exist essentially. We love being in-itself. We don’t want anything to do with being for-itself. I think therefore I am, said Descartes. Everything real is rational, said Hegel. Thought, either our thought or the thought created for us by others, makes us real. We only want an existence that is essential even though real experience is existential.

   Nothing is more essential than our state governments. They almost never act existentially and they force us to live according to laws that they decide are essential. Any existential deviation from their laws is a crime. It is truly an amazing thing whenever a state acts existentially. The government of Russia between 1941 and 1945 became the most existential government ever. It ordered all its men to forget completely about living essentially and to die existentially. The laws of the German government designed to kill every Russian who resisted and enslave all the rest were not  essential for anyone in Russia. A war to save one essential state government from another essential state government created for a few years a bold and brave belief in the hearts of millions of men about to die that freedom alone was essential and everything else a universal lie designed to turn humans into statues.

Daniel McNeill

The website of The United States of the World is: usoftheworld.com

Read Daniel McNeill’s complete book, “The United States of the World” at: usoftheworld.com/history