Change in the Air Globally

Back long long ago in 1948 after the Second World War when Washington was giving billions of dollars to Europeans devastated by the war, one of the congressmen considering voting for the Marshall Plan asked whether or not they should put language in the bill forcing Europeans to buy American products. A Washington insider told him with a slick smile that that was not necessary because the kind of products Europeans needed existed only in America. Europeans and the rest of the world no longer need American money because they have plenty and they make their own products but they still take American money in one form or another. The American military and diplomatic apparatus still operates around the globe as though the Marshall Plan is an eternal global necessity. Americans passionate about supporting Donald Trump sense that new conditions in the world have made the global operations of their central government out of whack because they always favor foreign countries at the expense of their own country. Trump says as much in his speeches every day. He and his supporters are right. The global system centered in Washington has not changed since the end of the Second World War and it is dangerous, very dangerous, that the people who run the system can see no way to change and no necessity to change. It was once a vital necessity for America to export to foreign nations its capital and its technologies but the necessity has vanished. Change is in the air globally and the only realistic way to manage the change is to make Washington the central government with limited sovereign powers of a worldwide union of states.

Daniel McNeill
Daniel McNeill’s book The United States of the World about nation-states becoming new American states can be read completely at: usoftheworld.com/history
Daniel McNeill's books are displayed at: amazon.com/author/graceisall

A Nationalist Running For President Against an Internationalist

   Recently a media commentator said Donald Trump was a nationalist. Since Abraham Lincoln declared in his inaugural address of March, 1861  that the government in Washington was a national government, the correct view in written and spoken public discourse has always been that America is a nation. But suddenly It is shocking that Trump plans to take what we have been told for three or four generations seriously. He is going to act as president as though he were the head of a nation.

  The root of the shock is that the present state of the worldwide economy now favors America acting as a nation. For a long time America has been shipping its technologies and its capital all over the globe. But It has now no longer any new foreign nations to raise up to modern economic prosperity. Economically and militarily the world can now take care of itself. Before America could not export its goods because the world was too poor to buy them. Not any more. The last reclamation project for America was China.There is now a global market for American products and buyers with deep pockets. History is on Donald Trump’s side. The American economy is booming loaded with all the most advanced technologies and creating new technologies daily while it has at the same time a huge labor force willing to work at low wages. The roaring industrial economy of America in the nineteenth century is all set to roar again in the twenty-first century. Many Americans sense something new is happening and they want a part of it. They want to make America great again. Donald Trump caught their need and is expressing it. He is a nationalist.

   Hillary Clinton is an internationalist. She has had too much direct contact with the way the Washington government works to be anything else. She has declared that the decisions she makes as president will affect directly people worldwide. But is it possible for the next president to be an internationalist like President Obama? The world must go on for its own security with Washington acting as a de facto world government but the old diplomatic and military categories that gave rational form to Washington’s worldwide adventures are worn down badly. A nationalist is running for president in America against an internationalist. No one knows who will win.

Daniel McNeill 

Interested in the cultural, religious and philosophical meanings symbolized in the ritual drama of a baseball game? Go to Daniel McNeill’s book on the meaning of baseball The Theater Of The Impossible at Amazon.com or click on this link:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+theater+of+the+impossible

Daniel McNeill’s book The United States of the World is at: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1499534639

   

Globalization, Scarcity and Violence

   Once globalization meant that anyone with enough political, military or economic power could cross state borders to pursue some interest. It was always violent. The local political power in the foreign state had to be forced to sanction legally the foreign intervention. The politicians in the state where the invasion began used military and diplomatic powers to aid their investors to install their corporations in foreign states. Profits were made and portions of them were enjoyed by a few citizens in the penetrated state, natural resources were exported and  advanced foreign industrial technologies were introduced to increase the general wealth. We see now that immigrants from poor countries are also pushing their way into foreign states violently to pursue their economic interests against the interests of local citizens. Already 50% of the people in North America have moved to a state where they were not born for some economic interest. Scarcity and violence are the motors of all economic life. The struggle once went on traditionally in economies within the borders of states. Now it goes on across all state borders globally. Terrorism is a third form of globalization. It also crosses any border to pursue its interests. It is against the peaceful life of any people in any state. It carries the logic of globalization to the limit. It is pure violence and fights scarcity worldwide for no one.

   International businessmen, immigrants and everyone else need to have double citizenship in a worldwide union of states to fight scarcity and rationalize the violence inherent in globalization. Citizenship must become worldwide since citizenship in just one state is no longer safe from violence from global forces with the power to cross international borders. Why should not everyone have the right to live anywhere in any state worldwide with full rights of citizenship simply by entering a state and taking up residence? International corporations enjoy such rights, immigrants act as though they already possess them and terrorists with their bombs and their kalashnikov rifles have expropriated the right to go anywhere across any national border and kill anyone. Everyone needs to be a citizen of both a worldwide union of states and a traditional state. Unless we all have the right to go anywhere worldwide to pursue our interests,  businessmen, immigrants and terrorists will continue to arrogate the right for themselves alone and the violence of globalization will continue uncontrolled.

Daniel McNeill

Interested in the cultural, religious and philosophical meanings symbolized in the ritual drama of a baseball game? Go to Daniel McNeill’s book on the meaning of baseball The Theater Of The Impossible at Amazon.com or click on this link:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=the+theater+of+the+impossible

Daniel McNeill’s book The United States of the World is at: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1499534639

Elephants in 50 Rooms

   The central theme of American history since the Civil War has been the rise in power of the Federal Government against the power of the states. Historians have rewritten our history with the lie that America has always been a nation, even before the rebellion against Britain, and that it is now a nation with a national government in Washington. It is not necessary to go into all the details of the lie. It has bloomed into a pageant of nationalism in the lines of hundreds of writers over the generations whose corrupted views will collapse and dissolve before the eyes of anyone who reads without prejudice the Declaration of Independance and the Constitution. But the lie has done its damage. The 50 states of the American union in Americans’ eyes have no more power and prestige than county governments. It is as if the states have been reduced to a state of political worthlessness. Are they right? Let’s see if we can find any worth in our states.

   I count at least 7 things any state must pay for with its tax revenues. It must pay for an army to defend it. It must pay  diplomats to represent it globally. It must pay  for public education. It must pay for police and fire services. It must pay for health programs. It must pay for the expense of running a retirement system. In our states either the Federal Government or local town and city governments pay for these 7 services. Our state governments pay little or nothing. In addition to the taxes they receive on individual and business income and other taxes, they receive grants of monies for state projects from the Federal Government although Washington of course gets no monies from state revenues. States do pay for courts and the state legal system and pay for prisons and a small state police force. But the court system is backed up by a federal court system and the police system by the FBI, the federal police, for which the state governments pay nothing. International airports in states are funded by Washington and state customs duties and the US Coast Guard are run and paid for by Washington. Each state has representatives elected to the Congress in Washington for whose election, salaries and services it pays nothing.

   Historians have belittled states for years aiding centralizing political forces.Our states have taken every kind of political and  legal hit but they have rolled with the punches and are on their feet alive and with billions of dollars to spend to benefit their citizens. Even with reduced sovereignty, which the Supreme Court has the power to revert, they still have more sovereignty than the central government and they are in a better position financially to do good works than foreign fully sovereign states. Our states’ citizens are totally loyal to the Washington government, whose strength guarantees their strength, so the unity of the union is not in doubt. The American states have pockets stuffed with money since many of the necessary government activities in states are aided or paid for by federal and local taxes. The states have big full pockets and they should go on a spending spree. We Americans should wake up and see at last the elephants in 50 rooms.

Daniel McNeill

Totalization

   In Jean-Paul Sartre’s great work of social philosophy Critique of Dialectical Reason, scarcity produces continuous totalization. An individual either totalizes those around him to form a group that he can control or else he is himself totalized and forced to be a living element of a totalization in course. Groups form and they are themselves totalized into larger social groups struggling to perpetuate themselves among competing social groups of their size. There is no end to totalization. The largest totalizations are nations but if we open our eyes in the postmodern world, we must conclude that nations themselves are now being totalized. Few men working behind the scenes with power and influence can resist trying to totalize nations by exercising on an individual level global powers which should by right belong to all the people of the globe represented democratically in a world government.

   It is not just large business corporations that try to rule worldwide behind the scenes. Totalizations within states, like military departments and diplomatic departments, can act globally in the interests of a small group within them who use the totalization for their own global interests. Religions are active all over the globe totalizing individuals into large masses with great power that can be directed secretely. The evils of globalization produce factions within religious totalizations that have no longer religious goals and are irrational and inhuman attempts to fight globalization by terrorist violence. Globalization is itself a form of terrorism. Who is behind it, where is it going, will it take my job, who does it benefit, who can stop it, where will it lead etc. All we know definitely about globalization is that it is the ultimate worldwide totalization that happens beyond the control of any one state and that it goes on uncontrollably even though hundreds of individuals in thousands of totalizations in course worldwide are fighting to profit from it by directing it.

   It is impossible not to be aware that globalization is now the main challenge of world history and that it can itself be the cause of the end of history. Only some kind of world government can possibly control it and such a government already exists. It is located in Washington DC. It has been at work since the Second World War both creating globalization and trying to direct it. It has had great failures and great successes. It has benefitted humanity greatly and it has harmed it greatly. It is so firmly rooted with enormous power at the center of worldwide financial and economic development that its sudden absence from history would be a worldwide disaster. Can Washington be a worldwide government rather than a national government? Can it be a central democratic force at the center of the ultimate worldwide totalization in course? Yes it can. And yes no other government can because they are all fully sovereign governments of fully sovereign states. Washington is not a fully sovereign government of a fully sovereign state. It has the power right now to admit any state to its union of states that wishes to gain for itself power against the worldwide forces aiming at totalizing it.

Daniel McNeill

A New Napoleon in Washington?

    Donald Trump is out to be the champion of a nation. The other four candidates don’t care whether America is a nation or not as long as they can be president of it. We can not expect the Clintons who have spent 8 years at the top in Washington to be much concerned about an American nation. They will be out to play leading roles in the worldwide power poker game between states with huge piles of money and power at stake. Donald Trump wants to make America great again. But America can never be great as a nation. It can only be great when it uses its unique revolutionary political system to direct the states of the world towards good ends. The Washington government ought to become the central government of a worldwide union of states.

   The American revolution needs a Napoleon. All revolutions have a teleological momentum. They can not stop until they reach the goal that was implicit at their beginning. Why did the founding fathers who created America in 1787 give the Federal Government limited sovereign powers if their goal was to create a nation? Their Constitution created a union of sovereign states and it gave Congress the power to admit new states. The real purpose of the Constitution and of America revealed itself again and again with each of the 37 additional states Congress admitted to the union over a period of 172 years up until the admission of Hawaii in 1959. A new Napoleon at the head of the Washington government would need courage and boldness but in the end like the old Napoleon he would be merely forcing America to go where history for 229 years has been pushing it to go.

   Who of the five candidates for president can be the champion of the revolution? Only the one that the establishment fears. Revolutionary movements stall. Their momentum pushes them down roads that sometimes end at roadblocks. The establishment fears putting Donald Trump’s finger on the nuclear button. Translated, this means the present model of the organisation of states worldwide by American military and diplomatic power must go on in its present form forever. Rich people have vested interests in the present international status quo. A transition from a united states of America to a united states of the world would benefit both the rich and the poor by opening the whole world to political freedom and vast economic opportunities but the present model favoring the rich works well enough. Napoleons reorganize the world for the better but they cause trouble. Trouble is what our American revolution needs to get back on the right road. Donald Trump is the only one of the five presidential candidates who is troublesome.

Daniel McNeill

States' Rights

   Since the Civil War the Federal Government has never stopped trying to gain more power over the states. But if you you use the expression “states’ rights”, you dump yourself into a huge vat filled with intellectual black tar, the same hot and boiling verbal tar that is spread justly over people who support or refuse to condemn the klu-klux-klan. But what if states do in fact have rights and what if the exercise of states’ rights is now the only real means left for Americans to govern themselves democratically? Governor Romney denounced Donald Trump recently as a fraud and it is implicit in his criticism of the naive voters who support Trump that if they believe they have some sort of democratic control of the Washington government they are wrong. The President, the Congress and the Supreme Court have great power and men with power in Washington fight to use it to their advantage. The Congressmen and Senators we send into the fight from our states battle as best they can but they lack the power to turn the tide of the battle to the advantage of the citizens back home in their state. The Federal Government is fully committed to using its power militarily and economically worldwide. The Supreme Court in Citizen’s United has judged that unlimited money can be spent on politicians to gain economic and political power in Washington. Our government in Washington is the center of a worldwide complex of international and interstate governmental and economic activities that is now such an essential component of all organized life on our planet at all levels that without it a calamity would fall on us all worldwide that would make the decline and fall of the Roman Empire seem trivial. The Federal Government is a world banker with mountains of monies, billions and billions, stuffing its pockets and sent quickly flying from its munificent hands to whoever has the right stuff to come to Washington from anywhere in the world and grab some of it. We don’t have, we who send most of the money to Washington, “states’ rights”? Since most of us have no money to buy influence in Washington, we must count politically for nothing? We Americans are totally loyal to a government in Washington that is not fully sovereign and not located in any state and yet we in our states don’t have rights that count politically? We have to start counting. We have to understand that it is not so bad that we can not govern in Washington as long as with some help from it we can at least govern democratically our states.

Daniel McNeill