"---the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole uncivilized world under British rule, for the recovery of the United States, and for the making of the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire."
One of the little-known amazing facts of the Civil War is that the Russian Czar Alexander II posted his navy to both the Atlantic and Pacific coast of the U.S. His actions thwarted British and French military interventions. The Czar proclaimed that if Britain or France intervened in the U.S. Civil War, then he would consider it as casus belli to initiate war. His actions may have saved the Union.
Close ties between the U.S. and Russia led to the 1867 Alaska Purchase, and eventually in 1906 there were plans to build a rail tunnel crossing the Bering Strait. It would have connected the U.S. and Russia. Eventually it could have joined with the Trans-Siberian Railroad, which the Russians started building with American help in 1891. The connection would have linked the U.S. to China and Europe too, with a "land bridge" of rail.
The British Empire viewed railroad construction as acts of "aggression". The British Empire tried to sabotage them, because they bypassed the mighty Royal Navy, which ruled the sea. Empires view any competition as acts of aggression against their world domination and trade. British propaganda labeled Germany's Berlin to Bagdad railroad "German aggression" leading up to World War One.
The clash of two Americas was more than a North versus South conflict over slavery, although it was very much that too. It was also a clash of political and economic philosophies and policies. The clash was between the "British System" versus what became known as the "American System of Political Economy".
The American System promotes economic development, industrialization, and trade tariffs to protect developing domestic industries against foreign dumping of cheap products. It also proactively promotes large infrastructure projects such as railroads. The federal government finances them with a national bank. The federal government's authority and duty to "coin money and regulate the value thereon" is proclaimed in the U.S. Constitution. A national bank can best provide funding for infrastructure projects and industrialization. Matthew Ehret calls lending for infrastructure "creative debt", because it produces value. The results of an American System are shared prosperity.
The foil of the American System is the "British System" of slavery, exploitation, imperialism, war and scarcity. The British System is based on Adam Smith's laissez-faire "magic" hand, private banking, debt-slavery, Malthusianism zero-sum economics, social Darwinism, survival of the fittest, and eugenics. The British System is enforced with soul-destroying violence, to which it becomes addicted.
The American System is a win-win system. The British System is the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. The American System promotes liberty. The British system promotes authoritarianism. The American System honors human rights. The British System is dehumanizing. Some of the champions of the American System were George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, and later Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King.
The American Revolution sparked an international movement in Russia, France, Germany, Prussia, Spain, Italy and even India and Morocco!. It motivated Czar Alexander II to free the serfs and begin developing Russia. The American system inspired Otto von Bismarck to consolidate German, and develop Germany's industry and technology. The American System held out the possibility of uniting the U.S. with Russia and China in a global system of cooperation. The American System was Alexander Hamilton's and Abraham Lincoln's vision of Manifest Destiny, which was to be for the benefit of all humanity.
Alas, the American System was sabotaged by the British Empire, domestic subversive elements and elitists. Every U.S. president who backed the American System and a national bank was assassinated or died in office under mysterious circumstances. William Harrison was assassinated in 1841, Zackery Taylor died mysteriously in 1850, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, James A. Garfield in 1881, William McKinley in 1901, Warren Harding died mysteriously in 1923, Franklin Delano Roosevelt died under suspicious circumstances in 1945, and John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a conspiracy in 1963.
And other opponents of the "British System" were assassinated in this 200-year bloodbath of the 19th and 20th century. Alexander Hamilton was killed in a duel by Aaron Burr in 1804. The "Great Liberator" Czar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881. Louis XVI who favored a constitutional monarchy and the American System was executed in 1793, as was French President Sadi Carnot in 1894. Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Canovas in 1897. King Umberto I of Italy in 1900. Mahatma Gandhi in 1948. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated in 1968.
Matthew Ehret's book "The Clash of Two Americas" shines a light on many other landmark events. They include Benjamin Franklin's 20-year campaign to unite the colonies, the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the role of Frederick Douglass as an advisor to Abraham Lincoln, and France's failed "American" revolution; and the deep origins of the "deep state", and much, much more.
Pulling a quote from "The Clash of Two Americas", the plot of the book might be summarized by a quote from Lincoln's economic advisor Henry Charles Carey. Carey wrote in his 1851 book "The Harmony of Interests: Agricultural, Manufacturing, and Commercial" the following statement:
"Two systems are before the world " One looks to pauperism, ignorance, depopulation, and barbarism; the other to increasing wealth, comfort, intelligence, combination of action, and civilization. One looks towards universal war; the other towards universal peace. One is the English system; the other we may be proud to call the American system--
So, which side won the American Revolution? For most of its history the U.S. has been plagued by the English System. Cynics might say that the U.S. has always been the English System; a nation built on genocide, slavery, imperialism and war; and that the Declaration of Independence, and that the U.S. Constitution and the Founding Fathers were the heights of hypocrisy. The cynics would have a lot of evidence to back it up. The U.S. has many ugly stains on its history. And all of the "heroes" had many warts.
At Gettysburg, Lincoln spoke of America as a "government of the people, by the people, and for the people". Whose interests have mostly been served by the U.S. government? It has not been "we the people". The U.S. Empire, like all empires, benefits a small minority of traders, money changers, rentiers, old-money families, oligarchs, aristocrats, gangsters in suits, and country club elites. Empires do not create value for the world. They are parasites on the people. They create "negative value".
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