The American Counterrevolution

The Snowglobe of Orthodoxy

The current structure of the American way of life, and the establishment of a wasteful and corrupt empire was laid down in the late 19th and early 20th century. This is not an ancient and remote event. My great grandma, who was a constant presence in my childhood, was alive at the time when the scheme was concocted; Much of the story takes place in Ohio.

Furthermore, the history is well documented, so we can easily see how America was remade, and we can see how the construction continue today. (Eventually, we're going to go back farther to get to the older roots, but this is a good jumping off point.)

We live with the legacy of this scheme--vast public debt, and private fortunes concentrated in the hands of a few, lots of violent death, crumbling public infrastructure, and declining standards of living. When you look at the chain of empires, it's almost like an evil moves from the declining power to the ascendant power, hijacks it, drains it, and leaves the carcass.

So, the theme for the next several posts is going to be an investigation of this story. My initial entry point comes courtesy of Murray Rothbard's The Monetary History of the United States, which provides many references for research. Rather than detail and describe the ideology, I'm going to try to document the families and organizations that were involved in originating it, and look at the techniques they used to disseminate it.

The investigation will start with Charles A. Conant. Conant wrote "The Economic Basis of Imperialism" (September 1898) and a number of other works which helped sketch the framework of the new structure.

The United States today seem about to enter upon a path marked out for them as the children of the Anglo-Saxon race, not yet traversed because there has been so much to do at home. Almost as if by magic [emphasis added], the importance of naval power has flashed upon the mind of the country. The irresistible tendency to expansion... seems again in operation, demanding new outlets for American capital and new opportunities for American enterprise.

This new movement is not a matter of sentiment. It is the result of a natural law of economic and race development.

Conant argues that America has too much money to usefully invest at home, so needs to open overseas markets by force when necessary. In other words, by scheming, murder, and by using the resources of the nation, investors will get a better return on their investment. Conant advocated altering the constitution to centralize power in the executive branch, after Tsarist Russia, and also argued for centralized power in industry.

It seems likely that Conant had no original thoughts, but was a talking head of his day, acting as the public face and promoters' of another entity's ideas. So hopefully, it will become apparent where these ideas originated from in due course.