| | | American history is one of exceptionalism in a couple of important ways... but none more so than in the attempt we've made to craft and safeguard a LIMITED government.
And while the limits imposed have been eroded more and more over time... the Constitution still stands as an obstacle to those who'd prefer it did not limit them as it still does. And, one of the key limits it imposes isn't in the elements encoded in the structure of the document... that claims only the powers granted therein are legitimized... but in the structure of a divided government, a purposeful inefficiency ensuring competition for power enjoined between the branches would, at least, keep them busy fighting each other instead of us.
If you've not seen it yet... here's Bill Barr's recent speech at the Federalist Society... well worth the time.
But, while I agree with you about the near constant encroachment of the State... it is also increasingly clear that the battles that matter aren't entirely about the power of government as an independent entity... but are more about the power of government as an captive entity often engaged in the work of advancing an agenda... that is in no way subordinated to the will of the people or the power of the vote.
From Eisenhower's "Military - Industrial Complex"... see how far we have come ? Today's "Deep State" actors do not even shy away from the fact that their agenda is their own... weaker Presidents are simply captured and controlled by them... others co-opted in various ways... It used to be claimed that the secret meetings of the world richest men were rank conspiracy theory... today the Bilderbergers and others meet more or less openly and care little about others knowing (at least some of) their agenda.
Globalism, once proving itself little more than a rebranding of what was once called the Socialist Internationale... has morphed into supra-national corporatocracy... really an global oligarchy... with the corporate facade a convenience. It is not only the boundaries between nations that globalists seek to dissolve... but also the distinctions between government power and the private interests directing it.
There is too little attention paid to the fact... that power is power... and whether it is the State that acts in its own interest... or if it acts in the interest of some other... it feels the same and with the same effect when applied against those it is used upon.
I don't think the Founders had really fully considered that economic success might amplify private wealth to that degree it has... that some companies are larger, wealthier and more powerful than nations or their governments... and control governments in any case.
The industrial revolution has proven something of a source of a counter-revolution to the American experiment... because the Marxist response to the emergence of the mercantilist corporate industrial-financial power... was to ignore the hard won advances of individualism in the Enlightenment and the American Revolution...gladly surrendering them back to the power of the state... with the only caveat being that it would not be an absolute hereditary monarch usurping that power... but an absolute dictatorship of another nature.. that proves not that different in fact, over time.
Ideological barriers break down, too... when you observe that Capitalism today is no enemy of Socialism... but will gladly sacrifice our freedoms for their profits... and compete only for the right to co-opt and use government powers to enforce its monopolies.
That is what voters are presented as a false choice... not as "no difference between the two political parties" which is often true, because they are both controlled by the same interests... but as a false ideological choice to make... between Capitalism and Socialism... when there is no longer any difference that matters between them...
Capitalism... is NOT married to the concept of free markets... but gladly postures as if that must be true... as its corporatist advocates pretend to be for free markets and free trade... as they advance the opposite.
So, today, we have the corruption of crony capitalism... and a merging occurring between state and corporate power you note as something Mussolini would applaud... but, the melding of corporation and state we see occurring has a cost Capitalists are will to pay... that requires the surrender by us of our freedoms, including our free markets. Capitalists... it turns out... value their profit above our freedoms, and access to power over any ideological concern. China is being re-born into this convergence... with a purpose intended to co-opt others choices and force their submission to the globalist agenda... This melding of communism and corporate control of the productive enterprise... has us fostering the birth of the Fourth Reich... National Socialism with Chinese Characteristics... and with 1.44 billion people they're willing to sacrifice...
So, the whole point of our victory over Russian Soviet communism in the Cold War... was to liberate ourselves to allow the politicians to slave our economic potential to the subsidization and embrace of the development of China, with the option of converting Chinese Socialism into Chinese National Socialism ?
No thanks. State operated Mercantilism... is not "free markets and free trade"... no matter how many times you call it "free trade."
Freedom is the answer. Capitalism and Socialism are both aligned in opposition... not just to free markets... but to our Freedom from their control.
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