Apologists for Donald Trump and the new nationalist movement overtaking the West are fond of shouting that they are for "Americanism, not globalism!" Trump said it himself. It appears that the crusade of anti-globalization, long the darling of the political Left, has been usurped by the Right.
This alt-right crowd frequently applies this globalist label to liberalized immigration and international trade, as if those impose a net reduction in the USA's well-being. Yet a close reading of America's founding documents evince that our republic was founded on openness to peaceful trade and to people and of moral principles transcending ethnicity and government-drawn borders.
The alt-right and its nationalist "alt lite" fellow travelers apply the globalism tag as a sort of "package deal," conflating liberalized immigration, free trade, and unsavory international military treaties together as if these fall in the same category. A peaceable and free movement of goods and people across borders is a unified whole; freedom of trade and of migration do go together, but these are not part of any misbegotten collaboration on the part of the U.S. federal government with illiberal regimes on military affairs.
To the degree that "globalism" alludes to the United Nations placing delegates from the USA and from the Syrian government on the same panel and expecting them to "hash out their differences" on national security, as if these two sides have equally valid points, the founding philosophy of the United States was definitely not "globalist." Yet it does not follow that there is anything anathema to the USA about those other phenomena with which the alt-right and white nationalists try to conflate militaristic collusion.
America was founded upon the very principles of unrestricted migration and openness to international trade. Insofar as the peaceable movement of goods and people across borders is globalism, the United States was conceived, from the very outset, as the globalist republic.
Indeed, the immigrants into the USA presently being derided by the current anti-globalists are behaving in manner similar to the best of the generation that founded the U.S. republic, down to their very prioritization of their right to live peaceably over any and all statutes.
Morality Versus "The Law"
When nationalists heap scorn upon undocumented immigrants from south of the U.S.-Mexican border, they initially cite the fact that these undocumented immigrants have already willingly violated federal U.S. statutes. Like the eighteenth-century American colonists before them, these undocumented immigrants know better than to confuse morality with federal law. The right to live peaceably is paramount, and any statute that obstructs this right is corrupt and deserves to be broken. The undocumented immigrants' abrogation of such corrupt statutes evinces that, at least on an implicit level, they have some understanding of this. Rush Limbaugh huffs that "the current crop of illegals" is greatly inferior to prior generations of immigrants, as those prior immigrants "actually obeyed the law." Limbaugh's assertion definitely does not apply to the founding generation. Eight immigrants broke the law by signing the Declaration of Independence.
They had a good reason to demand independence. They, like the undocumented immigrants who came after them, resented the government hassling them when they peaceably crossed borders that governments arbitrarily drew on maps.
A major impetus to the Revolutionary War was the Royal Proclamation of 1763. King George III and Parliament feared that by venturing into southern territories, European colonists ran the risk of inflaming further conflicts with American Indians. In 1763 the British government drew a border on the map, indicating that this was a line that colonists were not to step over. The colonists illegally crossed that border anyway -- migrating from north to south -- establishing the settlements that ultimately became Kentucky and Tennessee. "Illegally moving and settling," notes Brown University International Studies professor Peter Andreas "...is an old American tradition, even if it was not called ‘illegal immigration.’" Consonant with what today's nationalists want done at the U.S.-Mexican border today, King George III militarized the border he drew. In Peter Andreas's words, the crown "deployed thousands of troops to the western colonial frontier to enforce the law."
As Austin Petersen reminded me, that crackdown is something that the Declaration of Independence cites as one of its grievances against George III:
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. ...
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.That passage is so glaringly contrary to the clichés of the "immigration skeptics," that it warrants a re-reading: the Founding Fathers cite, as one of the major reasons for disobeying the government, that the government has been "obstructing" American "Naturalization of Foreigners" and this government has been "refusing to...encourage their migrations hither..." That is, the Founding Fathers cited, as a significant reason for rebelling against King George, the valid evaluation that King George was not sympathetic enough toward open immigration into America. Indeed, the courage to stand up for rightful illegal border-crossing played a significant role in the founding of the American republic.
As Edward Snowden correctly observed, "We're a country that was born from an act of treason against a government that had run out of control. . . . The law is no substitute for morality." One reason that government was out of control was its measures running concomitant to its restrictions on the free flow of people: its restrictions on the free flow of goods across borders.
The American Revolution As a Revolt Against Those Obstructing Americans From Globalist Trade
Recall that what agitated the colonists about the British government was its assault on trade in the form of the Navigation Acts. The colonists resented that the British government hindered the colonists from importing goods produced by people from other European countries. If anyone told the colonists that they were obligated to purchase solely from the British so as to provide more job security to their fellow British citizens, the colonists would reply that other people's job security was not a sufficient reason to use the force of law to obstruct a colonist from purchasing goods peaceably from whomever he wanted, regardless of what country the goods were peaceably produced in.
That they be allowed to trade freely across borders, with whomever they wanted peaceably, was so important to the colonists that the Founding Fathers listed, as another major grievance against the king, his "cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:..."
The nationalists have been working so hard to bury this fact that that passage deserves another look. For the American revolutionaries, the government "cutting off our trade" was so abhorrent that it merited the revolutionaries disobeying that government entirely. Now that is a commitment to global trade, and it comes straight from the Founders.
"Everything America Is About"
Rutgers University global management professor Farok Contractor reminds us that global exchange had established itself in the colonies much earlier. Turkeys are genetically related to peacocks, and they look much different in the wild than they do in captivity. Europeans learned about turkeys when Conquistadors encountered them in Mexico. These birds were imported into Europe and farmed there. The pilgrims in Massachusetts were so accustomed to Mexican-descended domestic turkeys that, upon discovering wild turkeys where they lived, the pilgrims eschewed those birds and instead preferred the Mexican-descended breed. Moreover, the American Indian Squanto proved an enormous help to the pilgrims exactly because of his prior experiences with varying cultures. Professor Contractor wants us to realize that "the story of those early settlers’ struggle, which culminated in what we remember today as the first Thanksgiving feast, is also a tale of globalization, many centuries before the word was even coined."
America was about globalization from the day of its settlement, and it continued to be so throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Osama bin Laden knew that to strike at the heart of America, he had to take down a landmark that epitomized American strength. It was thus no accident that that symbol of Americanism and American strength was the World Trade Center. The screenplay for an unproduced Jackie Chan movie gets to the essence of why the center of world trade would be a perfect target: "It represents capitalism. It represents freedom. It represents everything America is about." This means that the World Trade Center succeeded in living up to the vision of the New York City Port Authority officials who conceived it, implementing the principle of American free enterprise insofar as it facilitated global commerce. Minoru Yamasaki, the architect for the twin towers, explained,
World trade means world peace, and consequently the World Trade Center buildings in New York ... had a bigger purpose than just to provide room for tenants. The World Trade Center is a living symbol of man's dedication to world peace ...the World Trade Center should, because of its importance, become a representation of man's belief in humanity, his need for individual dignity, his beliefs in the cooperation of men...A study by Skyler J. Cranmer et al., published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, confirms the veracity of Yamasaki's observation that American facilitation of world trade contributes to fostering peace. As PsyPost summarizes it,"economic trade relationships...play a strong role in keeping the peace among countries." Bin Laden recognized that America is about world trade, and to attack world trade is to attack the very spirit of America. In his Open Letter to America, Bin Laden cited its promotion of global capitalism as one of his main objections to the country:
You are the nation that permits Usury, which has been forbidden by all the religions. Yet you build your economy and investments on Usury. As a result of this, in all its different forms and guises, the Jews have taken control of your economy... You are a nation that permits gambling in its all forms. The companies practice this as well, resulting in the investments becoming active and the criminals becoming rich. ... You are a nation that exploits women like consumer products or advertising tools calling upon customers to purchase them. You use women to serve passengers, visitors, and strangers to increase your profit margins. You then rant that you support the liberation of women.Nor is it surprising that in a 2007 video communiqué wherein he cites Noam Chomsky by name, bin Laden demanded that Americans
liberate yourselves from the deception, shackles and attrition of the capitalist system. If you were to ponder it well, you would find that in the end, it is a system harsher and fiercer than your systems in the Middle Ages. The capitalist system seeks to turn the entire world into a fiefdom of the major corporations under the label of "globalization" in order to protect democracy.Besides Chomsky, bin Laden placed various other anti-globalization authors on his bookshelf, such as Greg Palast. Even The Guardian took note of bin Laden's fixation on "the evils of financial capitalism" in influencing international markets.
The role of the United States in financial globalism carries on from what the American revolutionaries started. The thirteen colonies broke away from King George's control not because they wished to isolate themselves in some ethnic enclave, but because they sought to open themselves up to goods and immigrants from the rest of the globe, exchanges in culture and production and peaceful human relocation that an arrogant Head of State would deny to them. Given that even in the years following the Constitution's ratification, each state was considered a separate country under the larger federal Union, the USA has a history of being, paradoxically, an internationalist nation.
The United States also began as globalist when it came to matters of state and diplomacy. In Hawaii for years I was beguiled by a Rothbardian anarchist. To garner more support for his blame-America-first foreign policy, this Rothbardian liked to recite this quotation from Thomas Jefferson as proof that the USA had rightfully obligated itself from refraining from any diplomatic or military interventions with foreign countries: "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none..."
That Rothbardian's citation of Jefferson on that count was misleading, as the republic would not have formed if not for a strategic alliance. The colonists sent John Adams and Benjamin Franklin to France, where they won the favor of the king, who sent troops to assist against the British. Insofar as foreign military alliances are globalism, globalism enabled the colonists to win the Revolutionary War.
No, Vox Day, These Ideas Didn't Start in the Nineteenth Century; They Were Present At the Founding
I am not the first to have made the points above in defense of open movement of people and goods. For that reason, anti-immigration nationalists such as Theodore "Vox Day" Beale claim to put forth various rebuttals to these points. Vox Day, for instance, says that in the early years of the American republic, the Founding Fathers had not conceived of it as a "melting pot" where immigrants settle into this new republic and freely adopt peaceable customs at their own choosing. "The problem that most white Americans have, and that most conservatives have," Beale tells a fawning Stefan Molyneux,
is that they were sold a myth: they were sold the myth of the melting pot. They were sold the myth of the "nation of immigrants." ... All of those things are lies. All of those things are either middle-nineteenth-century or early-twentieth-century concepts that have been sold and propagandized to people in the United States so that they would believe that America was not a white nation, that American was not a Christian nation. It's completely bogus.Subsequently Beale/Vox Day adds,
The very clear historical fact of the matter is that all of those [conceptual] inventions about America being a nation of immigrants and "the melting pot" and that sort of thing, those were all concocted much later [than the founding, around the late nineteenth century] in order to make the second-wave immigrants -- which was mostly the Italians, the Irish, and the Jews -- to make them feel like they were real and proper Americans, just as American as anyone else, but it wasn't true. It's a self-serving immigrant myth.He goes on,
I was shocked to find out that "the melting pot" was actually fundamentally conceived and popularized by Israel Zangwill, who was a Russian Jew living in Britain. I mean, it had nothing to do with the United States. It was basically a play about the United States from somebody who didn't really know very much about it. And here we have adopted it [the melting pot idea] as what [eugenicist] Steve Sailer calls the Zero-eth Amendment, which is "The Founding Father Emma Lazarus carved it on the bottom of the Statue of Liberty in 1776."It is true that the exact phrase melting pot to describe the United States was popularized in 1908 as the title of a play about different ethnic groups learning to live together in the USA. But it does not follow from this that the concept was unfamiliar to Americans prior to then. The idea does indeed go back to the era of the Founders, and a similar expression -- "individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men" -- was used for it.
The idea was expressed publicly in America at least as early as 1782 -- over four years prior to the ratification of the U.S. Constitution -- by J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur in Letters From an American Farmer. As Hector St. John de Crèvecœur puts it in his "Third Letter From an American Farmer,"
What...is the American, this new man? ... He...who leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced... Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world. ... The American ought therefore to love this country much better than that wherein either he or his forefathers were born. Here the rewards of his industry follow with equal steps the progress of his labour; his labour is founded on the basis of nature, self-interest; can it want a stronger allurement? ...This is an American [emphasis added].
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| This photo is from January 21, 2017. See if "Letters from an American Farmer" is in your local library system, as it is in mine. |
No, Mr. Beale/Vox Day, the idea of the American melting pot is not something invented just in the nineteenth century; it slightly preceded the U.S. Constitution going into effect.
No, Vox Day, The Founders Agreed With Emma Lazarus
The common rationalization that "immigration skeptics" provide is, "Immigration was different then." Immigration was OK back when the immigrants were mostly Europeans, proclaims Stefan Molyneux, but these days immigration amounts to "Third World immigration." Poor (dark-skinned) immigrants from poor countries, having suffered under political repression, are not to be trusted, says Stefan Molyneux, for this reason:
Just because they're running away from an abusive authority, it doesn't meant that they're not going to re-create it. I mean, that's like saying a teenage girl that runs away from an abusive household is going to automatically [sic; split infinitive] end up in a peaceful marriage. They tend to bring their trauma with them and re-create it.Likewise, Molyneux goes on, because dark-skinned, impoverished immigrants have known nothing but violence and repression, they will impose this same sort of dysfunction upon their richer native-born neighbors.
Rationalizations such as Molyneux's were not good enough for Emma Lazarus. You may recall that these words from her sonnet, "The New Colossus," are inscribed on the pedestal of the statue to which the poem's title refers:
Give me your tired, your poor,To that, Mr. Beale/Vox Day scoffs that this is a "historical absurdity, and yet we act like it's more important than the Constitution or any of the early acts of the early Congresses." Vox Day wants us to believe that Emma Lazarus's championing poor non-WASPs from poor countries was not consistent with what the Founders hoped for.
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
Beale/Vox Day's sniffing evinces his ignorance of the fact that George Washington agreed entirely with Emma Lazarus's sentiment. Quoting George Washington's December 2, 1783 address to the Volunteer Association and Other Inhabitants of the Kingdom of Ireland,
The bosom of America is open to receive not only the opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall wellcome to a participation of all our rights and previleges...Once again, an idea that Vox Day falsely imputes as merely a nineteenth-century revision was actually present among the Founders in the Revolutionary Era.
Founded on Philosophic Principles That Apply Globally
In keeping with the theme of promoting Vox Day's white nationalism and ethnic segregationism, Stefan Molyneux has taken to referring to Europe and the English-speaking countries, including the United States, as "the white countries":
You can be against nationalism -- fine -- but then you have to be against the nonwhite countries who are the most nationalist and the most ethnocentric. . . . Whites are the least nationalistic people. . . . You can disagree with the argument that whites should have some kind of homeland, sure, but if it's only whites who shouldn't have a homeland [he means the United States], you're a racist. If everyone else is allowed to have a [racially homogeneous] homeland except whites, you're a racist.He says that left-wing politicians "carve up white countries and hand them out to Third-Worlders for votes."
Let's get something straight: even if all nonwhites voluntarily vacated the United States and no one was left in it but white people, the USA still would not be a "white country." The reason, as I have said before, is that, as Margaret Thatcher has noted, the republic was founded not on ethnicity but on a philosophy: the universal rights of man, rights belonging to all men, not just white men. Yes, we know about many legal institutions in the USA that contradicted that; the U.S. republic could not live up fully to the principles expressed in its founding documents as long as there was slavery and then Jim Crow and then as long as women were denied the vote. Even the U.S. Constitution itself, sadly, contradicted the principles of equal rights the Declaration defended, in that the Constitution, upon ratification, deemed that if you were of a particular race you would be counted as three-fifths of a person. In that respect the Constitution codified racial discrimination, and it was not until the Fourteenth Amendment's passage that this was reversed.
To America's credit, the movements of abolitionism and civil rights and women's suffrage and, yes, liberalizing immigration have all been about applying the Declaration's philosophy farther and more consistently, helping America live up its ideals and thus maximize its Americanism.
Stefan Molyneux's proclamation that whites have historically been deprived of a homogeneous racial "homeland" is asinine -- all countries existing prior to the United States were founded as homogeneous racial "homelands." France, for instance, was already the ethnic homeland for the Francs. In cases where a new nation-state was founded by the union of several smaller countries, such as Germany being the unification of such places as Bavaria and Prussia, it was a union of separate countries where the inhabitants were still closely related.
This is not to deny that, prior to the United States, there were some countries and cultures that established important precedents in advancing the truth that moral principles in governance should transcend ethnicity and race. The city-state of Athens benefited to the extent that it was open to immigrants such as Aristotle -- metics, they were called -- coming into the city and engaging in cultural and commercial exchange. Sadly, even Athens fell prey to xenophobia, as Macedonian immigrants such as Aristotle were violently threatened, prompting Aristotle to flee. Thankfully, Aristotle's Macedonian protégé, Alexander the Great, established a political system that sought to rise above the xenophobia that drove out Aristotle. Upon being made the capital of the domain Alexander established, the Egyptian city of Alexandria reduced xenophobia somewhat by allowing for many people of different religions and ethnicities to live together: Egyptians, Africans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, and Jews. Despite practicing brutality in war, the Roman government allowed the many ethnic tribes its conquered to obtain Roman citizenship and to take part in Roman civil society. Again, Africans and Egyptians and Persians and Greeks and Germanic people could be citizens alongside the Romans.
In the 1600s, allowing for peaceful openness to foreign goods, foreign migrants, and foreign ideas is what allowed the Dutch Republic to thrive. The Dutch Republic's openness to foreigners gave shelter to John Locke, then in exile from his native England, as he penned the Two Treatises of Government that would inspire Thomas Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers. That is, globalism is what enabled the formation of the philosophic ideas that gave rise to the American republic.
In spite of the strides they had made against racism and xenophobia, it was the case that the governments of ancient Greece and ancient Rome and the Dutch were still founded as an accident of history by a particular ethnic group upon splitting off from some larger ethnicity-based union or by some one ruler annexing, to his own dominion, some tribes nearby that were already closely related to his own tribe. What set the USA apart was that its founding documents stated explicitly that the new republic was founded not on some people deciding to have their own ethnic enclave, but on particular philosophic principles. Moreover, the founding documents make explicit that these philosophic principles apply to all human beings, not one ethnicity.
Whereas most countries were founded upon notions of blood and soil -- what Vox Day would have us believe the USA was also founded upon -- Thomas Paine makes clear the USA's founding broke away from that tradition:
The revolution of America presented in politics what was only theory in mechanics. So deeply rooted were all the governments of the old world, and so effectually had the tyranny and the antiquity of habit established itself over the mind, that no beginning could be made in Asia, Africa, or Europe, to reform the political condition of man. . . .
But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, -- and all it wants, -- is the liberty of appearing. The sun needs no inscription to distinguish him from darkness; and no sooner did the American governments display themselves to the world, than despotism felt a shock and man began to contemplate redress.
The independence of America, considered merely as a separation from England, would have been a matter but of little importance, had it not been accompanied by a revolution in the principles and practice of governments. She made a stand, not for herself only, but for the world, and looked beyond the advantages herself could receive. . . . Its first settlers were emigrants from different European nations, and of diversified professions of religion, retiring from the governmental persecutions of the old world, and meeting in the new, not as enemies, but as brothers. . . .
The revolutions which formerly took place in the world had nothing in them that interested the bulk of mankind. They extended only to a change of persons and measures, but not of principles, and rose or fell among the common transactions of the moment. . . . Conquest and tyranny, at some earlier period, dispossessed man of his rights, and he is now recovering them. And as the tide of all human affairs has its ebb and flow in directions contrary to each other, so also is it in this. Government founded on a moral theory, on a system of universal peace, on the indefeasible hereditary Rights of Man, is now revolving from west to east by a stronger impulse than the government of the sword revolved from east to west. It interests not particular individuals, but nations in its progress, and promises a new era to the human race.
That is, the USA was founded on globalist principles that are not merely global but universal. In this respect the United States, by being founded upon, and standing up for, specific consistently applicable philosophic principles is not only the globalist republic but the universalist republic. Consider that, despite the Constitution originally defying equality with its three-fifths-of-a-person rule, the Fifth Amendment nevertheless says,
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger;...nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use... [emphasis added].The Bill of Rights does not say "No citizen shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime...nor deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process..." It says no person. We know that the U.S. Founding Fathers interpreted the Fifth Amendment as applying to non-citizen, non-slave foreigners, and not merely U.S. citizens, because Thomas Jefferson himself stated this. The Alien Friends Act of 1798 was supposed to give the U.S. President sweeping powers to deport allegedly dangerous foreigners residing in the USA. Thomas Jefferson opposed that, saying:
The imprisonment of a person under the protection of the laws of this commonwealth, on his failure to obey the simple order of the President to depart out of the United States, as is undertaken by said act intituled [entitled] "An Act concerning aliens" is contrary to the Constitution, one amendment to which has provided that "no person shalt be deprived of liberty without due process of law," and that another having provided that "in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to public trial by an impartial jury, to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation, to be confronted with the witnesses against him, to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense," the same act, undertaking to authorize the President to remove a person out of the United States, who is under the protection of the law, on his own suspicion, without accusation, without jury, without public trial, without confrontation of the witnesses against him, without heating witnesses in his favor, without defense, without counsel, is contrary to the provision also of the Constitution, is therefore not law, but utterly void, and of no force.
James Madison, father of the U.S. Constitution, explains that himself:
If aliens had no rights under the Constitution, they might not only be banished, but even capitally punished, without a jury or the other incidents to a fair trial. But so far has a contrary principle been carried, in every part of the United States, that except on charges of treason, an alien has, besides all the common privileges, the special one of being tried by a jury, of which one-half may be also aliens. ... Alien friends [meaning foreigners from nations that the USA has not declared war against] except in the single case of public ministers, are under the municipal law, and must be tried and punished according to that law only.
What this means is that, outside of the context of wartime -- as wartime requires extreme measures if war is to be ended -- the United States government is supposed to recognize the rights of everyone, regardless of whether they are citizens or not, consistent with the republic's appreciation for the universality of individual rights.
The very notion of a government recognizing the universality of rights among all humans was unprecedented, and the absence of precedent is what prompted the Founders to describe their achievement with the phrase Novus Ordo Seclorum -- meaning "New Order of the Ages" and often mistranslated by conspiracy-theorist anti-globalists as "New World Order" (that would be Novus Ordo Seculorum). Both the real translation and the mistranslation describe very well what the U.S. founding was in practice. It set a new standard for the world to follow.
To the degree that the USA lived up to its founding principles of reason and liberty, the USA grew mighty and exerted an influence on other powers that have, on the net balance, been a positive one. Recognizing the salutary innovation in politics that the U.S. founding represented, Thomas Paine celebrated it as the most energizing and beneficent effort
to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains [Thomas Paine is praising the American colonies as more diverse than any one European nation], are to receive their portion of freedom from the events of a few months.Paine found it splendid that there be a new nation started not as just another enclave for one ethnic group, but as republic based on "the rights of mankind" as a whole. He understood what Stefan Molyneux and Ted "Vox Day" Beale wish for everyone to forget. The United States was never, nor will it ever be, a "white country"; the USA was founded for all men and women, white and any other race -- globally and universally.
Thus, to the extent that globalism refers to the peaceable free movement of products and migrants and ideas across its borders, the United States was conceived as the globalist republic, the universal republic. If peaceful and unfettered commerce and migration are globalism, then to be against globalism is to be against the republic and what it represents. Anti-globalism is anti-Americanism.
On January 28, 2017, the photograph with the library copy of Letters From an American Farmer was added. The photo was taken on January 21, 2017. On January 24, 2017, I added the quotation from Thomas Paine about the USA breaking with the tradition of how nation-states were traditionally founded. On February 12, 2017, I added the quotation from James Madison about how the legal presumption of innocence applies to U.S. citizens and resident aliens alike. On March 9, 2017, I added the quotation from Thomas Jefferson citing and explaining the Fifth Amendment.
