‘The United States is not a republic anymore’, says Gore Vidal
By Afshin Rattansi, Tehran Times
TEHRAN (Press TV) -- An interview with legendary American essayist, author, social and political critic.
Press TV: We hear that Michael Mukasey is going to become the latest of the President’s Attorney-Generals to be subpoenaed, this time over his conversations with Bush and Cheney -- does this show that Congress is serious about calling the executive to account?
Gore Vidal: No, Congress has never been more cowardly, nor more corrupt. All Bush has do is to make sure certain amounts of money go in the direction of certain important congressmen and that’s end of any serious investigation. After all, one of the bravest members of Congress is Denis Kucinich who brought the article of impeachment in to the well of the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives must then try the president, and then after that it goes to the Senate for judgment. However, none of these things will happen because there’s nobody there except for Mr. Kucinich who has the courage to take on a sitting president who is kind of a Mafioso.
Press TV: How can it just be one person among so many hundreds of Congressmen who wants the impeachment of George W. Bush in these circumstances?
Gore Vidal: Well it’s because we no longer have a country. We don’t have a republic any more. During the last 7 or 8 years of the Bush regime, they’ve got rid of the Bill of Rights, they’ve got rid of habeas corpus. They have got rid of one of the nicest gifts that England ever left us when they went away and we ceased to be colonies -- the Magna Carta -- from the 12th century. All of our law and due process of law is based on that. And the Bush people got rid of it. The president and little Mr. Gonzales who for a few minutes was his Attorney General. They managed to get rid of all of the constitutional links that made us literally a republic.
Press TV: You have often written about the United States’ superpower status in terms of the history of previous superpowers. Do you think we’re witnessing the end of U.S. power as some suggest. Will the White House be seen like Persepolis?
Gore Vidal: Well it won’t make such good ruins, no. It’ll be more like the tomb of Cyrus nearby. They managed to destroy the United States -- why? Because they’re oil and gas people and they’re essentially criminals. I repeat that this is a criminal group that’s seized control of the country through what looked like an ordinary election. But there’s some very nice films and documentaries about what happened in the year 2000 when Albert Gore won the election for president and they saw to it that he couldn’t serve. They got the Supreme Court -- which is the Holy of Holies ordinarily in our system - to investigate and then accuse the thieves of being absolutely correct and the winners -- Mr. Gore and the Democrats -- of being the cheaters. It’s the first law of Machiavelli, whatever your opponent’s faults are, you pick his virtues and you deny he has them. That’s what they did when Senator Kerry ran a few years ago for president. He’s a famous hero from the Vietnam War. They said he was a coward and not a hero. That’s how it’s done. When you have a bunch of liars in charge of your government you can’t expect to get much history out of that. But later on we’ll dig and dig… and we will dig up Persepolis.
Press TV: Senator Obama talks about change but of course he has courting Wall Street as well as the Israeli lobby -- do you see any prospect of change with him as president?
Gore Vidal: Not really. I don’t doubt his good faith, just as I do not doubt the bad faith of Cheney and Bush. They are such dreadful people that we’ve never had in government before. They would never have risen unless they were buying elections as they did in Florida in 2000, as they did in the State of Ohio in 2004. These are two open thefts of the Presidency. When I discovered that this did not interest the New York Times or the Washington Post or any of the press of the country I realized our day was done. We are no longer a country we are a framework for crooks to go in and steal money. Knowing that they’ll never be caught and they’ll be admired for it. Americans always take everybody on his own evaluation. You say I’m a state and they say “oh, yeah yeah yeah, he’s a state, isn’t that great.” And you accuse the other people of your crimes before you commit them. It’s an old trick which was known to Machiavelli who wrote about it in his handbook, the Prince.
Press TV: Finally that issue which is exercising so many minds in the Middle East and beyond. You, yourself have written about so many Imperial wars of the United States. Do you think Bush and Cheney would risk another war in what Mohammad ElBaradei of the IAEA calls a fireball?
Gore Vidal: They are longing to but they have spent all of the money. They have got it in their own private companies like the Vice-President and a company called Halliburton which is stealing more money and should be on trial sooner or later before Congress. But perhaps not, who knows? But it’s well known in Washington, these people are leaking away the money of the country. Well there’s no more money. They are longing for a war with Iran. Iran is no more a harm to us than was Iraq or Afghanistan. They invented an enemy, they tell lies, lies, lies.
The New York Times goes along with their lies, lies, lies. And they don’t stop. When the public that’s lied to 30 times a day it’s apt to believe the lies, is not it?
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When Did The United States Stop Being A Republic?
The United States hasn't been a republic for the last sixty-odd years, beginning with the untimely death of Franklin Roosevelt.
During these intervening years, America's republican form of government has been under relentless, unceasing assault from foreign interests -- primarily the Anglo-Dutch financier/corporate oligarchy and their nominally "American" quislings -- until they gained a foothold over America's republican form of government, and its national sovereignty, during the era of the Reagan Administration, when the "Fairness Doctrine" was eliminated and the beginning of the consolidation of our once "free press" under the umbrella of multi-national media corporations.
Once the Reagan Administration ended, the assault on republican government continued, despite the temporary setback of Watergate, when the American people rose up in a mass movement to demand the impeachment of Richard Nixon.
This concerted assault on republican government continued through the Presidencies of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, until those who sought to strip the U.S. of its sovereignty, and to cripple the republican form of government, succeeded in rigging not one, but two Presidential elections in favor of George W. Bush.
What should be shocking and outrageous is that the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections were stolen with such casual ease, the U.S. launched itelf into an illegal and clearly immoral war against Iraq based on lies and rampant fear-mongering in the wake of a "false-flag" terrorist operation on Sept. 11th, 2001, while permitting the looting of the nation by the Anglo-Dutch financier oligarchy -- through Halliburton and other corporate entities -- and the relentless evisceration of the Constitution by those who hold the reins of political power continues to strip the nation of what's left of its financial and human capital, and will never be called to account for the crimes which they've committed.
And throughout it all, the American people continue to sit idly by, watching the republican form of government, which the Founding Fathers gave everything they had to bring forth, be crushed to death under the heel of "friendly fascism", not raising their voices in protest against the grave injustices being committed against them day after day, and actually admiring the predators who keep looting and looting the American economy until there's nothing left for the predators to steal.
When Benjamin Franklin added the words "... if you can keep it" to his declaration that a republican form of government had been born, he was well aware it would be up to the American people to be vigilant and on guard against those who would attempt to destroy the republican form of government and replace it with an "American-style" oligarchy. Unfortunately, he would be outraged, saddened and disappointed to see that a generation of Americans have taken the sacrifices which he and the other Founders made to bring America's republican form of government for granted enough to fall asleep at the wheel, and allow the oligarchs to come in and destroy the nation.
This is truly a sad commentary on just how we've degenerated as a people and a nation, when many of our fellow citizens continue to sit idly by as our national sovereignty is systematically stripped away, our few real "freedoms" slowly eroding away until there's nothing left to defend, and our republican form of government will soon cease to exist.
First and Foremost: What is a republic?
A republic is a why, polity is the what. Federalism is a bicameral system of two legislative houses passing on laws.
Polity is how societies organize themselves into governing bodies. Polity is from the Greek politeia meaning citizenship or government. Political relates to governments and the public interest. Whereas, economy relates to the production and consumption of goods and services and the supply of money.
Together it conveys the meaning of political economy.
Republican pertains to a republic. Republic, is from the Latin res publica which conveys both the public good and the public affairs. Virtue is the motivating force and the first principle of a republic. Virtue is the desire to do good. In a republic, virtue is the basic truth on which all other truths rest.
Therefore, republican virtue is the desire to do good for the public good. However, who is to say what the public good is or what good is in general, has caused many a republican society to struggle with the duty and obligation of government. Inasmuch as polity is how, virtue is why, societies organize themselves into governing bodies.
America’s political economy is clearly based in capitalism. Capitalism is an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. Capitalism is clearly America’s political economy. Most of America’s founding fathers believed, however, that capitalism was to bring about a great era of goodwill toward all people and nations.
The main body of this work explores the heritage of republican virtue upon which the nascent capitalism of the 1790s had a tremendous impact. It is not a critique of capitalism’s worth, value, or benefit. It does however, inquire as to whether those advocates of capitalism, in the late eighteenth-century honored or dishonored their ancestral republican heritage.
Hamilton's vision for America was much like Roman virtue. The expansion and domination of trade backed by an elite military. However, as is often a source of mis-perception Hamilton was not a love of England just its' empire. "While extolling as vice England's practices, it was not Hamilton's intention to improve but to replace England's supremacy. "To make a second England of America, eventually to take over Britain's ascendancy."1
However, Hamilton was much unlike his brethren. It must be remembered that Hamilton was a late comer to the Revolution and was not a part of the causes and motivations that preceded that event by a century. "There was no sharp break between a placid pre-Revolutionary era and the turmoil of the 1760's and 1770's. The argument, the claims and counter-claims, the fears and apprehensions that fill the pamphlets, letters, newspapers, and state papers of the Revolutionary years had in fact been heard throughout the century."2
"...Hamilton stressed the representative variety of popular government, he never committed himself to the definition of republican government propounded in the Federalist by his collaborator James Madison. Madison is the creator and sole advocate of the idea of republican government."3 "A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place."4
Eventually, Madison found himself disillusioned after the adoption of the federal Constitution. "He [Madison] was apparently not aware of the results which the Constitution would produce. He soon became one of the chief architects of the party which opposed the Federalists' interpretation of the Constitution."3 Madison had soon realized that "not all of his Federalist colleagues shared his particular conception of a republican America; some of them he was appalled to learn, even thought in terms of deliberately promoting what he thought necessary to forestall."5
"Although Hamilton's policies were adopted at the time, they were not the only policies available and many of these same policies were actually abandoned within a few years after Hamilton's retirement from government."6
When historians begin to inquire about causes and motivations, more insight is needed.7 Everything that is written, is not history. Alexander Hamilton for example, is one entity in American history that many sorts of people use, rather than truly understand. What Hamilton represents is for most, more important than who he was, what he believed, or what motivated him.8
In my book The Never Realized Republic: Political Economy and Republican Virtue I have two chapters devoted to Hamilton's vision:
Chapter V
The Foundation of Hamilton's Vision:
The Power of Authority
Chapter VI
Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury:
The Financing of His Vision
This is fresh scholarship based in a precise historicity. Please see it on Amazon.com. ISBN: 0615121144
1Gerald Stourzh, Alexander Hamilton and the Idea of Republican Government, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1970), 6.
2The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, (Cambridge: Mass, 1992), rev. ed., Foreword, XV.
3 The Federalist Papers, Clinton Rossiter, ed., (New York: Nal Penguin Inc., 1961), No. 10, 81.
4 Robert E. Brown, Charles Beard and the Constitution, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1956), 81.
5 Drew R. McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 120.
6 Stanley D. Rose, “Alexander Hamilton and the Historians,” Vanderbilt Law Review, II, (1958), 855. Hereinafter cited as Rose, “Alexander Hamilton and the Historians
7“Although, as Jefferson later reminded Joel Barlow” ‘A great deal of the knolege of things [about the Revolution] is not on paper but only within ourselves.’ Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic: 1776-1787, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969), 74.
8"There seems to be a continuing effort to preserve and use Hamilton as a symbol. The result has not been history.” Rose, "Alexander Hamilton and the Historians," 854.
For other proposals of Morris, see ibid., 862, Madison, ibid., 863, and Jefferson, ibid., 867. See how "the government could have settled its obligations honorably with a far smaller load of debt than Hamilton wished to impose." Frank Bourgin, The Great Challenge: The Myth of Laissez-faire in the Early Republic, (N.Y.: George Braziller), 74.
For other references of the undesirable impact Federalists had on the infant republic see:
For Federalists as being equated with Roman civic excellence, see pp. 129.
For Federalists “faith” and “values” rooted in their “modification, and not rejection, of traditional expectations about the role of authority in public life, [and] about the permanence of social classes and the desirable distance between the governed and the governors,” as virtus, civic excellence, or Roman virtue, see pp. 132.
For Federalist models based in classical values, see pp. 156-157 and 207. For Rome as an empire “whose passion was to command, whose ambition was to conquer,” see pp. 193.
For Hamilton’s vision as one of expansion, domination, and aggrandizement of government, see pp. 129 and 211. For the duty of the sovereign and republican virtue being replaced by civic excellence, see pp. 197-198, 223, and 221.
For a vital distinction between the desire to do good for government... civic excellence, and the desire to do good for the public good... republican virtue, see pp. 203.
For Hamilton's class predilections coinciding with the great objects of his policy. Acceptance of the the twin principles of class domination and exploitation as inevitable, and with them, the maxim that political power rests on the control of property.” Ibid.,Frank Bourgin, The Great Challenge: The Myth of Laissez-faire in the Early Republic, (N.Y.: George Braziller), 69.
“Since Hamilton set out to plant in America a British system of public finance that would promote the same kind of economic development that England had undergone since the Glorious Revolution, it is no wonder that scores of Americans saw his program as turning the Revolution of 1776 upside down.” Drew McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980).
“I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.” Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and the Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Book IV, Of Systems of Political Economy, (Chicago: William Benton, 1776, 1952), 194. See also “public services are never better performed that when their reward comes only in consequence of their being performed and is proportioned to the diligence employed in performing them.” Ibid, Book V, Of the Expenses of the Sovereign or Commonwealth, 313.
"Most of our political evils may be traced up to our commercial ones, as most of our moral may to our political."
James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, March 18, 1786, Rutland, eds., et al., Madison Papers, (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1984), 502.
Lastly President George Washington in a letter to the Marquis de Lafayette and citing foreign policy in his Farewell address, ought to shame any American President that adopted the Roman virtue of expansion and domination of trade backed by an elite military:
“In an era that could quite sharply distinguish action abroad from action at home, the unique posture of the President with regard to foreign affairs was proclaimed by the then representative John Marshall: [Chief Justice, 1801-1835], ‘The President is the sole organ of the nation it its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations.’ Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law, (Mineola, New York: The Foundation Press, inc., 1978),163. See also 164, fn., 4, “Clearly, what Marshall had foremost in mind was simply the President’s role as instrument of communication with other governments.”
Social progress, and ethical behavior were of paramount importance and clearly the expectations of the Revolutionary generation. In President Washington’s Farewell Address he made it clear, for all and future presidents: ‟Observe good faith and justice towards all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.-Religion and Morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it?” What have American Presidents accomplished in the latter half of the twentieth-century? What will the first half of the twenty first-century realize? What brand of virtue is America exporting? What brand of virtue do these regimes represent?
Besides morality in government, Washington had a clear expectation or desire for the future of foreign policy: ‟The great role of conduct for us, in regard to foreign Nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little Political connection as possible,-So far as we have already formed engagements , let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith,-Here let us stop.-” President Washington’s Farewell Address, September 17th, 1796, in Meyers, eds., et al., Sources of the American Republic, Vol. 1, doc. # 64, 202 - 207.
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.” The Declaration of Independence.
Peter J. O'Lalor
republicanscholar@gmail.com
http://www.amazon.com/Never-Realized-Republic-Political-Republican/dp/06...
3rd edition coming soon: Preview at: http://revolution.allbest.ru/history/00030638.html