A few days ago, the US celebrated its 250th anniversary, and the whole world noted the anniversary. There was a celebration, but without any special content that could be remembered. Bad weather on July 4 in Washington and New York is not a sufficient excuse.
Former British Prime Minister and the main instigator of the war in Ukraine, Boris Johnson, published a column in the Daily Mail that day. He tried to convince us that Britain is most creditable of such a long existence, power and glory of the US, but also of the fact that USA will not be overtaken by China for at least another 100 years! According to him, “Brits should take parental pride in the very existence of modern America – perhaps the most extraordinary of all Britain’s contributions to the world today“. As a key argument, he states that all 56 signatories of the Declaration of Independence were British and that what they did, according to him, “is not the result of some autochthonous American political revolt but the logical consequence of the 18th century English enlightenment – from John Locke to Edmund Burke.”
We know that most of the text of the Declaration of Independence is actually a long list of George III’s misdeeds towards his American colonies, which is the main stamp of the first global – criminal British empire on the entire planet. However, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin relied on spiritual and moral principles and values, and not, as Johnson claims, on “loyal service to the Crown”. After the declaration of independence, the American revolutionaries waged a difficult war with George III for another seven years, before he was forced to recognize the independence of the United States. The crucial paragraph of the Declaration of Independence reads:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
For Johnson, anything that brings wealth and power is good, but the Founding Fathers held to principle above all else. His basic premise is therefore wrong, and so is his conclusion – America will not, thanks to Britain, be ahead of China for another 100 years. On the contrary, thanks to Britain, it has already lost its leading position.
In the first half of its existence, the United States firmly adhered to its principles and spiritual and moral values, in the difficult years of opposition to Britain and its unscrupulous oligarchy, from the War of Independence, the War of 1812, through the Civil War, until the end of the 19th century, creating an unprecedented attractive force and a source of progress for the entire world. However, the umbilical cord with Britain was never completely severed, and in the 20th century, America turned into an instrument of the oligarchy for unscrupulous rule of the world – the criminal British Empire 2.0.
America can be great again only if it is attractive again as in the 19th century, and not if it strives to be a world hegemon again as in the 20th century, that is, if it returns to spiritual and moral values.
To better understand this, let us look at the turning point in American history and its greatest moral decline – the war in the Philippines. A famous testimony to this was left to us by the even more famous Mark Twain, at that time one of the vice-presidents of the American Anti-Imperialist League. We bring in its entirety a key excerpt, translated into Serbian for the first time, from Twain’s extensive review of the book about the Filipino leader Aguinaldo, written by the American historian Edwin Wildman (Aguinaldo, by Edwin Wildman. Boston: The Lothrop Publishing Co., 1901.). The review was first published in its entirety in The Atlantic Monthly (April 1992, pp. 52-65). Mark Twain has his say:
“Thirty Thousand Killed a Million” by Mark Twain
„In his Chapter XIX our historian sums up its costs. In money it had cost us “several hundred millions of dollars.” Add the dead (the italics are mine): “It took the lives oi four thousand American boys to establish American sovereignty,” and “It is impossible to estimate [the Filipino] loss on the field, but one officer has estimated it at one-sixth of the population, which would be over a million.”
We can accept the figures of our loss as correct, for the official record was at hand. As Mr. Wildman makes no comment upon the estimated Filipino loss, we must conclude that he has convincing reasons for believing it to be trustworthy.
One million. We have had as many as 60,000 men out there at a time— but not in the field. Half were in the field, possibly, but not more; of the other half many were in hospital, the rest were distributed everywhere on garrison duty. Thirty thousand killed a million. They must have killed all; a population of six million can by no possibility furnish more than one million fighting men. Thirty thousand killed a million. In eighteen months. It is 100 percent of the opposing force. And all killed dead in the field. It is 85 percent above any figure ever reached before in any age, even with flood and famine and massacre to help. Thirty thousand killed a million. It seems a pity that the historian let that get out; it is really a most embarrassing circumstance.
Of course we do want military glory, but this is getting it by avalanche.
With the achievement of our 30,000 before us, we recognize that the renown of it can never fade from human history so long as wars shall remain the pastime and the admiration of men. It will take its rightful place, and live forever, in that wee small list of imperishable things— the Things Which Have Happened But Once.“
What preceded this? The actions of José Martí and the Cuban revolutionaries against the cruel Spanish colonizers inspired many in America to provide moral as well as material aid. Both Mark Twain and other future members of the American Anti-Imperialist League therefore supported the outbreak of war between the United States and Spain.
The Spanish-American War was fought from April 21 to August 13, 1898. It began with the sinking of the American ship “Maine” in the harbor of Havana, Cuba, and resulted in the acquisition of US sovereignty over Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines, and the establishment of a protectorate over Cuba, as determined by the Paris Peace Treaty between the United States and the Kingdom of Spain, signed on December 10, 1898. The Americans transformed from an ally of the Philippine Revolution, while it was directed against the Spanish colonizers, into a perpetrator of genocide against the Filipinos, and from a world source of freedom into a new colonial power.
Leading American libertarians – the most elite representatives of politics, big business, literature, and science, as soon as it became clear where the war was leading, decided to provide organized resistance.
The American Anti-Imperialist League was founded in Boston on June 15, 1898. Although its resistance was very strong in the first years (they tried to influence the presidential elections at the turn of the century, but the “father of American imperialism” William McKinley was still re-elected – he was very popular) and the League spread across America, it gradually lost influence as the negative shift in the elites in the USA ended and the League dissolved itself on November 27, 1920. The first president of the League in the period 1898–1905 was George S. Boutwell, a minister and senator from Massachusetts, and after him, until its dissolution, the league was headed by Moorfield Storey, a famous lawyer and fighter for human rights. The League, as vice-presidents, had over 50 prominent figures, of whom the most famous in our country are: Andrew Carnegie, Felix Adler, Mark Twain, Henry James, Edgar Lee Masters, William James.
Although it seems to many that anti-imperialism is a communist idea, created together with Lenin’s work “Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism”, published in 1916, there were no communists among the creators and bearers of this idea in the USA. There were classical liberals, puritans and others, and all of them shared a sincere devotion to the ideas of the Founding Fathers. And this leads us to the conclusion that the widespread anti-communism in many countries is actually an unfounded construction of oligarchic propaganda. But more on that another time.
As proof of how large the historical watershed of American history was at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century and how important it is for the future of America and the world, we bring you another premiere in Serbian in its entirety – a key document of the American Anti-Imperialist League (according to the Fordham University Internet Modern History Sourcebook):
Platform of the American Anti-lmperialist League
“We hold that the policy known as imperialism is hostile to liberty and tends toward militarism, an evil from which it has been our glory to be free. We regret that it has become necessary in the land of Washington and Lincoln to reaffirm that all men, of whatever race or color, are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We maintain that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. We insist that the subjugation of any people is “criminal aggression” and open disloyalty to the distinctive principles of our Government.
We earnestly condemn the policy of the present National Administration in the Philippines. It seeks to extinguish the spirit of 1776 in those islands. We deplore the sacrifice of our soldiers and sailors, whose bravery deserves admiration even in an unjust war. We denounce the slaughter of the Filipinos as a needless horror. We protest against the extension of American sovereignty by Spanish methods.
We demand the immediate cessation of the war against liberty, begun by Spain and continued by us. We urge that Congress be promptly convened to announce to the Filipinos our purpose to concede to them the independence for which they have so long fought and which of right is theirs.
The United States have always protested against the doctrine of international law which permits the subjugation of the weak by the strong. A self-goveming state cannot accept sovereignty over an unwilling people. The United States cannot act upon the ancient heresy that might makes right.
Imperialists assume that with the destruction of self-government in the Philippines by American hands, all opposition here will cease. This is a grievous error. Much as we abhor the war of “criminal aggression” in the Philippines, greatly as we regret that the blood of the Filipinos is on American hands, we more deeply resent the betrayal of American institutions at home. The real firing line is not in the suburbs of Manila. The foe is of our own household. The attempt of 1861 was to divide the country. That of 1899 is to destroy its fundamental principles and noblest ideals.
Whether the ruthless slaughter of the Filipinos shall end next month or next year is but an incident in a contest that must go on until the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States are rescued from the hands of their betrayers. Those who dispute about standards of value while the foundation of the Republic is undermined will be listened to as little as those who would wrangle about the small economies of the household while the house is on fire. The training of a great people for a century, the aspiration for liberty of a vast immigration are forces that will hurl aside those who in the delirium of conquest seek to destroy the character of our institutions.
We deny that the obligation of all citizens to support their Government in times of grave National peril applies to the present situation. If an Administration may with impunity ignore the issues upon which it was chosen, deliberately create a condition of war anywhere on the face of the globe, debauch the civil service for spoils to promote the adventure, organize a truthsuppressing censorship and demand of all citizens a suspension of judgment and their unanimous support while it chooses to continue the fighting, representative government itself is imperiled.
We propose to contribute to the defeat of any person or party that stands for the forcible subjugation of any people. We shall oppose for reelection all who in the White House or in Congress betray American liberty in pursuit of un-American ends. We still hope that both of our great political parties will support and defend the Declaration of Independence in the closing campaign of the century.
We hold, with Abraham Lincoln, that “no man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent. When the white man governs himself, that is self-government, but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government-that is despotism.” “Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in us. Our defense is in the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men in all lands. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain it.”
We cordially invite the cooperation of all men and women who remain loyal to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.”
Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness are inviolable values for Americans. They are defined as individual ones, while the values of the community, from the family to humanity, are considered derived from them. However, colonial policies – both Spanish and, even more so, British, which determined the course of history on the American continent, do not accept the inviolability of human life and freedom as a fundamental value, but only as one of the means for manipulating the masses. Everything must be subordinated to the oligarchy, and it is allowed to manipulate human beings and kill them. In the Philippines, the United States betrayed Washington and Lincoln, betrayed its Revolution (which preceded the French Revolution!) and its ideals, and turned into a monster ruled by an anational oligarchy.
Today, the terrible massacre in the Philippines seems to us like a “classic” colonial war. But the trampling of the principles of the American Revolution, which the American Anti-Imperialist League sincerely defended, turned wars not into a battle for colonies and territories, but into a business associated with the killing of people. Created on land exterminated by the Native Americans, the USA, even in the first, more glorious half of its history, constantly struggled with the unscrupulousness of the oligarchy, which still considers itself to have two “main” homelands – Britain and the USA. Having had a limited, but very significant, participation in two world wars, the USA, by creating and using nuclear weapons, crossed another Rubicon of unscrupulousness, creating, along with countless military interventions and regime changes, a series of terrible five-million war massacres: Korea, Vietnam and the “War on Terror”, all the way to Ukraine and Iran. Practically all wars of the 20th century were directed primarily against Russia, as the main world defender of principles and spiritual and moral values, which by its very existence makes the anti-human rule of the oligarchy impossible.
America is faced with a choice, and all of us with it – either it will return to the principles and spiritual and moral values that created it and made it great, or it will itself burn as a victim of the demonic plans of those who do not hesitate to do anything.
