America

443 Introduction The point has now been reached when the historical-organic method which has been developed in the foregoing must be applied to the immediate Future. The thought-method has been perfected, it has shown us our historical position, our affinities, that from which we are forever inwardly dissociated, our organically-necessary inner imperative. It will now be brought to the material of happening of the immediate Future. Having answered the what, there remains yet the how. The first step in practical politics is the assessment of facts. Next is the intuition of possibilities. This is as true of the cheap practical politics of a self-seeking party-leader as it is of the practical politics of a great statesman like Pitt, Napoleon, or Bismarck. The facts and possibilities of Western politics in 1948 cannot be arrived at without a complete understanding of the significance and potentialities of America. Up to now, this has usually been absent in Europe. The time has come when all policies, ideas, and viewpoints, must be referred to facts. Prejudices, whims, abstractions, and ideals are out-of-date, and even if they were

444 not ludicrous, they would still be a luxury, for a straitened, looted, occupied Europe must think clearly if it is to capture once more the custody of its own Destiny. Up to the Second World War, the mistake and confusion about America was well-nigh general in Europe. It was greater in some European countries than in others, but there is no point in separating them, since Europe is a unit for world-historical purposes, whether this fact is widely appreciated or not. Europe suffers as a unit, it loses in World Wars as a unit, and when it realizes its own unity, it can also win in World Wars and impose its inner imperative on the form of the Future. There is only one way this age can understand phenomena, and there is only one method to which organic units yield up the secrets of their Past and Future — that is the organic-historical method. The character and potentialities of America are found in its history. The theses of Cultural Vitalism afford the means of understanding the significance, both to itself, and to the Western Civilization, of the history of America.

445 The Origins of America The American continent was populated by individual migration. The greater number of the immigrants came from the Northern races of Europe during the period 1500–1890. During the early, the Colonial, period (1500–1789), the life-conditions under which the incoming settlers lived were rigorous in the extreme. The hinterland was populated by hostile savages. The secure territory was a narrow strip of seaboard some 1500 miles long. Beyond that was the vast, unexplored, unknown “frontier.” This word, an important one in understanding the national souls of the former nations of Europe, had an entirely opposite significance in America. Instead of a boundary between two power-units, it referred to an area, vast, dangerous, and almost empty. It needed only to be conquered in order to be incorporated, and in this process, the greatest enemy was Nature, rather than the savages, for in no case were the latter highly organized. Thus America did not develop in the early centuries the consciousness of political tension which arises from a true frontier.

446 Whether or not a man penetrated into the hinterland to take land there for his own was a matter of his personal will. These millions of quadrate kilometers were not developed by State action, but by individual imperialism. This fact also is of the highest importance for subsequent American history. In the first place, these immigrants had in general the characteristic Gothic urge into the distance which had given to Western history its unique intensity. Whether they were adventurers or religious refugees, merchants or soldiers, they nevertheless left their European homes for an unknown and dangerous land of privation and primitive conditions. The new conditions under which they lived perpetuated and developed the instincts which had brought them there. In small groups these early Americans cleared the forests, built forts and homes. The farmers ploughed the fields with rifles slung over their shoulders. The women worked in the homes with weapons at hand. The human characteristics encouraged were self-reliance, resourcefulness, bravery, independence. Cities grew up along the coast — Boston, New York, Philadelphia — and in these cities arose in the 18th century something resembling society, and even a sort of American Encyclopedism. The early colonies, thirteen in number, were organized as independent parts of the British Colonial Empire. The main connection with England was the defense it afforded against the French, whose colonial empire embraced Canada and part of the hinterland of the colonies. With the defeat and expulsion of the French armies from Canada, in the 1760’s, the centrifugal forces in the colonies gained in strength, and French policy aided in every way to separate the colonies from England. Commercial and political motives were both present in the motivation of the American Revolutionary War, 1775–1783,

447 but the thing of greatest interest at the present day was the ideology in which the colonial Encyclopedists formulated their war-aims. Most of the colonial propagandists — Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, John Adams, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin — had been in England and France and had thus absorbed the new Rationalistic Idea which had triumphed in English society, and was conquering the French State and Culture. The colonials adopted the French form of the Rationalist doctrines, demanding “The Rights of Man,” rather than the rights of Americans. It was not the ideologists — as usual — who fought the war. It was the soldiers who did that, and this war was the most difficult America has ever fought. The entire population of the colonies was only three million, and these were stretched the entire length of the Atlantic seaboard. Their only common bond was opposition to England, and hope of mutual independence. The British were stronger on the sea than the French, who were aiding the colonials, and the British not only enlisted the savages on their side, but also hired mercenary troops from the European continent for this war. Owing to Prussian and French assistance, the colonials were finally successful in concluding the war on the basis of complete independence from England. The war had been a civil war as well as a war for independence, and the leaders of the Revolution had to conduct a terror at home against the Loyalist elements of the colonial population. After the War, most of these emigrated to Canada, which remained British. If the Revolution had been unsuccessful, the colonial leaders would have all been hanged for treason, but their success meant that they are regarded as the Founding Fathers in America. Owing to a small group of patriots and creators — History is always in the custody of a minority — the thirteen colonies were

448 united into a federal union. The leaders who brought about the union were principally Washington, John Adams, Franklin, Pinckney, Rutledge — and, above all, Alexander Hamilton, the greatest statesman ever to appear in America. If this great soul had not there been at work, the subsequent history of the American continent would have been the history of a series of wars, which by now would have reached the stage of annihilation wars, and might not yet have united the continent. The union was on the basis of a federal state, and the allocation of power between it and the component “States” was sought to be expressed by a written document, a “constitution.” The leading French political theories of the time had developed an opposition, which exists only in literature, between “the State” and “the individual.” The American Constitution, and also the various constitutions which were adopted by each component colony, tried to codify this “opposition” and listed a series of individual rights vis-à-visthe State. It has not been noted sufficiently how totally different these developments were from contemporary phenomena on the home soil of the Culture. In the colonies, there had never been a State except as a word. Hence, the Constitution represented a beginning, and not a denial of tradition, with the attempt to replace the old form of the State by a piece of paper. In America there was no tradition. Hamilton wanted a monarchical State, on European traditionary lines, but Rationalist ideology and propaganda was too strong to be overcome and these demanded a republic. The “individual rights” that were set down in the various documents had no analogy to European conditions. Since there had never been a State in America, and had never been a frontier in the European sense, there had been only “individuals.” Land could be acquired by claiming it and settling on it. Any

449 man who wished could at any time take his gun and go into the hinterland, and there live as farmer or trapper. Thus the talk of “individuals” was nothing new, and furthermore it represented no parallel to European conditions, since the State was the basis of the life of persons in Europe. It was only because there was a State in Europe that the “individual” was able to live and prosper. If there had been no Prussian State, half the population of Europe would have passed into Slavic conditions. There had been no State in America — the closest thing to a State had been the far-away English government — and hence the American anti-State ideology was not denying any fact of life, but was merely affirming the fact of individualism, which had grown out of the empty and vast landscape. State is a unit of opposition — there were no other States on the North American continent, and thus no American State could arise.

450 The American Ideology This organic individualism was formulated in written constitutions and in a literary-political literature. Typical of the spirit of this literature is the Declaration of Independence. As a piece of Realpolitik, this manifesto of 1776 is masterly: it points to the Future, and embodies the Spirit of the Age of Rationalism, which was then ascendant in the Western Culture. But, in the 20th century, the ideological part of this Declaration is simply fantastic: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” In 1863, the charlatan

451 Lincoln delivered an address in which he speaks of America as “a nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” He then went on to say, referring to the War of Secession, then in progress, “...we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” This ideology continued right into the middle of the 20th century, and was even, after the First and Second World Wars, when a totally different and utterly incompatible outlook was in the ascendant, offered to the home of the Western Civilization as a model to imitate somehow. It was only the entirely fortuitous material success which attended American arms that enabled this ideology to survive late into a century which had outgrown it, and, not because it is important as a political outlook, but solely because it is an effective technique for splitting and disintegrating Europe, must this archaic ideology be examined here. The Declaration of Independence is saturated with the thinking of Rousseau and Montesquieu. The basic idea, as in all Rationalism, is the equating of what ought to be with what will be. Rationalism begins with confusing the rational with the real, and ends by confusing the real with the rational. This arsenal of “truths” about equality, inalienable and inherent rights, reflects the emancipated critical spirit, devoid of respect for facts and tradition. The idea that governments are “instituted” for a utilitarian purpose, to satisfy a demand of “equal” men, and that these “equal” men give their “consent” to a certain “form” of “government,” and then abolish it when it no longer serves the purpose — is pure Rationalistic poetry, and corresponds to no facts that have ever occurred anywhere. The source of government is the inequality of men — this is the fact.

452 The nature of the government is a reflection of the Culture, the Nation, and the stage of development of both. Thus any nation may have one of two forms of government, an efficient or an inefficient government. An efficient government carries out the Idea of the nation — not the “will of the masses,” for this latter does not exist if the leadership is capable. Leadership goes down, not when “the people” rationally decide to abolish it, but when that leadership becomes so decadent as to undermine itself. No government anywhere is “founded” on “principles.” Governments are the expression of political instincts, and the difference between the instincts of various populations is the source of differences in their practice of government. No written “principles” affect the practice of government in the slightest, and the sole effect they have is to furnish the vocabulary of political struggles. This is as true of America as it is of every other political unit that has ever existed in five millennia of the history of High Cultures. Contrary to a certain messianic feeling in America, America is not completely unique. Its morphology and destiny are readable in the history of other colonies, in our own, and in previous Cultures. The reference in the Independence Declaration to government as having the purpose of effecting the “safety” and “happiness” of the population is more Rationalistic nonsense. Government is the process of maintaining the population in form for the political task, the expression of the Idea of the Nation. The quotation from Lincoln still reflects the Age of Rationalism, and his contemporary Europe could feel and understand such ideology, although, since State, Nation, and Tradition existed still in Europe, even if weakened, there was always resistance to Rationalist ideologies, whether of the Rousseau, Lincoln, or Marx variety. No nation was ever “conceived in liberty,”

453 and no nation was ever “dedicated to a proposition.” Nations are the creations of a High Culture, and in their last essence are mystical Ideas. Their coming, their individualities, their form, their going, are all reflections of higher Cultural developments. To say that a nation is “dedicated to a proposition” is to reduce it to an abstraction that can be put on a blackboard for the instruction of a class in logic. It is a Rationalistic caricature of the Nation-Idea. So to speak of a Nation is to insult and debase it: no one would ever die for a logical proposition. If such a proposition — which is also claimed to be “self-evident” — is not convincing, armed force will not make it more so. The numen “liberty” is one of the main foci of the American ideology. The word can only be defined negatively, as freedom from some restraint or other. Not even the most rabid American ideologist advocates total freedom from every form of order, and similarly the strictest tyranny has never wished to forbid everything. In a country “dedicated” to “liberty” men were taken from their homes, under threat of prison, pronounced soldiers, and dispatched to the antipodes as a “defense” measure on the part of a government which did not ask the “consent” of its masses, knowing perfectly well such “consent” would be refused. In the practical sense, American freedom means freedom from the State, but it is obvious that this is mere literature, since there never was a State in America, nor any necessity for one. The word freedom is thus merely a concept in a materialistic religion, and describes nothing in the world of American facts. Important also to the American ideology is the written constitution adopted in 1789, as a result of the labors of Hamilton and Franklin. Their interest in it was practical, their idea being to unite the thirteen colonies into a unit. Since the union could

454 never have been brought about at that time on any sort of central basis, the most they were able to bring about was a weak federation, with a central government that could hardly be described as government at all, but only as a formulated anarchy. The ideas of the constitution were mostly derived from the writings of Montesquieu. The idea of “separation of powers” in particular comes from this French theorist. According to this theory, the powers of government are three, legislative, executive, and judicial. Like all crystal-dear Rationalistic thinking, this is muddy and confused when applied to Life. These powers can only be separated on paper, in Life they cannot. They were never actually separated in America, although the theory was retained that they were. With the onset of an internal crisis in the 30’s of the 20th century, the entire power of the central government was openly concentrated into the executive, and theories were found to support this fact, still calling it “separation.” The various colonies retained most of the power that mattered to them — the power to make their own laws, keep a militia, and conduct themselves in economic independence of the other colonies. The word “state” was chosen to describe the components of the union, and this led to further confused ideological thinking, since European State-forms, where the State was an Idea, were thought to be equivalent to American “states,” which were primarily territorial-legal-economic units, without sovereignty, aim, destiny, or purpose. In the union, there was no sovereignty, that is, not even the legal counterpart of the State-Idea. The central government was not sovereign, neither was any state government. Sovereignty was represented by the agreement of two-thirds of the states and the central legislative, or in other words, a complete abstraction. If there had been fifty or a hundred million Slavs, or

455 even Indians, on America’s borders, there would have been a different notion of these things. The whole American ideology presupposed the American geopolitical situation. There were no powers, no strong, numerous, or organized hostile populations, no political dangers — only a vast empty landscape, sparsely populated with savages. Also important to the American ideology was the feeling — expressed above in Lincoln’s address — of universality. Although the War of Secession had nothing whatever to do with ideology of any kind — and in any case, the Southern legalistic rationale of the War was more consequent than the Yankee idea — Lincoln felt impelled to inject the issue of ideology into the War. The opponent could never be simply a political rival, bent upon the same power as the Yankee — he had to be a total enemy, intent upon wiping out the American ideology. This feeling informed all American Wars from that time onward — any political enemy was regarded ipso facto as an ideological opponent, even though the enemy had no interest whatever in American ideology. In the Age of World Wars, this ideologizing of politics was extended to a world-scale. The power that America chose for enemy was perforce against “freedom,” “democracy,” “liberty,” and all the other magic, but meaningless, words of that category. This led to strange results — any power fighting against the power America had gratuitously chosen for enemy became ipso facto a “liberty,” or “freedom” power. Thus both Romanov Russia and Bolshevik Russia were “freedom” powers. American ideology led America to claim countries as allies which did not return the compliment, but American ardor was not thereby dampened. This type of politics can only strike Europe as adolescent, and in truth, any pretense that 20th century forms and problems can be described in a 19th century

456 Rationalistic ideology is immature, or to be more blunt, silly. In the 20th century, when the Rationalist type of ideology had been discarded by the advancing Western Civilization, the American universalizing of ideology turned into messianism — the idea that America must save the world. The vehicle of the salvation is to be a materialistic religion with “democracy” taking the place of God, “Constitution” the place of the Church, “principles of government” the place of religious dogmas, and the idea of economic freedom the place of God’s Grace. The technic of salvation is to embrace the dollar, or failing that, to submit to American high-explosives and bayonets. The American ideology is a religion, just as was the Rationalism of the French Terror, of Jacobinism, of Napoleonism. The American ideology is coeval with them, and they are completely dead. Just as inwardly dead is the American ideology. Its principal use at the present time — 1948 — is in splitting Europe. The European Michel element battens on to any ideology whatever which promises “happiness” and a life without effort or sternness. American ideology thus serves a negative purpose, and that only. The Spirit of a bygone Age can give no message to a subsequent age, but can only deny the new age, and attempt to retard, distort, and warp it from its life-path. American ideology is not an instinct, for it inspires no one. It is an inorganic system, and when one of its tenets gets in the way, it is promptly discarded. Thus the religious doctrine of “separation of powers” was dropped from the list of sacred dogmas in 1933. Before that the holy tenet of Isolation had been put aside in 1917, when America entered into a Western War which did not concern it in any way. Resurrected after the First World War, it was again discarded in the Second World War. A political religion that thus switches the changes on its supernatural doctrines is convincing neither politically nor religiously. The

457 “Doctrine” of Monroe, for instance, announced early in the 19th century that the entire Western Hemisphere was a sphere of American imperialistic influence. In the 20th century, this passed into the special status of an esoteric doctrine, being retained for domestic consumption, while the external dogma was called the “good-neighbor policy.” The ideology of a people is merely intellectual clothing. It may, or may not, correspond to the instinct of that people. An ideology may be changed from day to day, but not the character of the people. Once that is formed, it is definite and influences events far more than they can influence it. The character of the American People was formed in the Secession War.

458 The War of Secession, 1861–1865 Politics in America in the European sense there was none. The American union was formed before the 19th century style of inner-politics was developed. Political parties in their later form were unknown to the authors of the Constitution. The word Party described a dangerous thing — factionalism, near-treason. George Washington in his farewell to public life, counseled his people against “the spirit of Party.” But ambitious men will always seek to have power, even the limited and irresponsible power available within the bounds of a loose federation. When tenure of power is limited to a few years (four years in the American union) the main inner-political problem becomes remaining in power. When the power is obtained by majorities in elections, the science of “electioneering” develops. Voters must be organized in order that the leaders may perpetuate themselves in office, and the technique of organization is the party. Organization takes funds, and it takes ideals. The ideals are for the masses of voters, the funds make it possible to spread them. The funds are more important because they are

459 difficult to procure, whereas ideals are plentiful. This dependence of party-organization upon a supply of funds brought about the situation in which rich men were able to make the party-leaders and party-organizations run things to please them. Even a party-leader in office was not independent, for the rich man alone could keep him there. The name given in the books to this type of government is plutocracy, the rule of money. This was the American form during the whole 19th century, and it continued to the year 1933. The source of the wealth of the richest men in America during the period 1789–1861 was manufactures and trade. The richest men were found in the Northern states, the manufacturing and trading places. The Southern states had a totally non-plutocratic organization. A society arose there on a patriarchal and hierarchical basis. Half of the population belonged to the African race and was held as slaves by white land-owners and planters. Slavery was less efficient than industrialism, for capitalistic purposes, because the slaves enjoyed complete security — protection against illness, unemployment, old age — whereas the Northern factory-workers were as completely unprotected in these respects. This gave the Northern industrialist one more advantage over the humanitarian slave-owner. The industrialists’ “cost of production” were cheaper. Factory-workers who were wiped out by illness or other catastrophe were not the responsibility of the industrialists — they had only the disadvantages of slavery, whereas the Africans in the South had its advantages as well. The South was thus less mobilized economically than the North and consequently desired the cheapest possible manufactures, which meant, at that time, English imports. Northern industry could not compete well with English imports, and demanded a high protective tariff. The tariff issue was the

460 focus of a political struggle for three decades before the War finally broke out. Once any issue, from whatever sphere of Life it derives, becomes of sufficient intensity to become political, other motives come in to support it. Thus Yankee ideologists fastened on the idea of slavery and made it a war-issue for the masses in the Northern states. The financial labor-exploitation of the Northern capitalists was held up as humanitarianism, and the patriarchal care of the Southern planter was branded as cruelty, inhumanity, and immorality. The ideological side of this war presaged coming American war-conduct. The Secession-War arose on the issue whether the Southern states, comprising a unit based on an aristocratic-traditional life-feeling, with an economic basis of muscle-energy, could secede from the union, which had been captured by the Yankee element. The Yankee territory was organized on a financial-industrial basis, with an economic basis of machine-energy. For three decades, the main political issue in the union had been the balancing of the number of representatives in the central government from Northern states against those from the Southern states. The South was on the defensive, for the North was outstripping it in wealth, power, and control of the central government. But because of its aristocratic tendency, the South had supplied a disproportionate number of the officers in the central army, and most of the war-material was in the South at the start of the War. The anti-financial heroic attitude of the South gave it an immense advantage in the field against the Yankee armies, who were inoculated with a war propaganda of jealousy of the superior life in the South. The War was a contest — not the last in Western history — between quality and quantity. The North had all the war-industries, most of the

461 railroads, and four times the population available for military purposes. The material weakness of the South was too great to be compensated for by its spiritual superiority on the field of battle, where its heroic spirit gained victory after victory over superior numbers. The South could not replace its human losses however, and this the Yankees could do, utilizing German and Irish immigrants in particular. This War was the largest-scale war in the Western Civilization up to the First World War. The armies numbered millions, the theater of war embraced more than a million quadrate kilometers. Railroads and ironclads entered tactics for the first time. Napoleon had calculated, from his experience on 150 fields, that the ratio in warfare of the spiritual to the material is as three is to one. Assuming this to be true, the defeat of the South was the result of Yankee material superiority of more than three times. This war had many lessons for Europe, but was mostly ignored in the European capitals, which were still in the nationalistic petty-state period, and not capable of large-space thinking. It showed the enormous military potentiality in America, it showed the Yankee character, which was thenceforth to be the American spirit, it showed the enormous will-to-power of the New York plutocracy — it showed, in short, that a base for a world-power had been laid here. The only European power which noticed it was the only one capable at that time of large-space thinking — England, and England’s attitude toward the War was throughout one of benevolent neutrality toward the South, to say the least. England was prevented only by the attitude of Russia from declaring war on the Yankee government. Southern commerce raiders were fitted out in English ports, and the Alabama was even manned with English mariners. Yankee strength on the seas meant that the military

462 task would have been too great for England. This was showed that America had passed the period when it needed to fear the intervention of any European power in North American or Caribbean affairs. No European power could afford to ignore the European-Russian situation, and thus could only commit its surplus power, so to speak, to transatlantic affairs. American power had now become greater than the surplus power of any possible European combination, considering the situation of the European powers vis-à-vis one another. This was the beginning of the fact of American isolation. Quite independent of any formulation of it, America was politically isolated from Europe as a fact, and furthermore it was the only power in a hemisphere. This fact, coupled with the vast inner landscape of America, developed the possibility of large-space thinking in America, as contrasted with the petty-stateism of Europe, which considered a hundred kilometers to be a great distance. It was, of course, European petty-stateism which permitted the development of America, in the beginning, and at every subsequent stage. This is more fully treated in the history of American imperialism.

463 The American Practice of Government The actual form of the government of America was a plutocracy, but the technique through which this government was maintained was usually taken by superficial thinkers to be the real government. The great epoch in the history of practice of government in America is 1828. In that year Andrew Jackson was elected President of the central government, and he immediately announced the new conception of office-holding as private economics. With his slogan “To the victor belongs the spoils” he dethroned forever the Federalist idea of a tradition of State-service. Government henceforth was “spoils” for successful party-politicians. The election of 1828 was the last appearance of the Federalist party in an election. It retained for itself, however, control of the Federal judiciary until the middle of the 19th century. Jackson’s election also put an end to the aristocratic “congressional caucus” method of choosing the presidential candidates. Thenceforth the parties had nominating conventions for this purpose. The forces of tradition,

464 which had been concentrated in the Federalist party, no longer appeared in inner-politics as an organized group. Their only remaining significance was social. Thus, all during the 19th century in America, there was no conflict of the European variety between Party and Tradition, between the Constitution-mongers and the aristocratic forces of Monarchy, State, Army, Church. The Constitution-idea meant three different things in America, in England, and on the Continent. In America the Constitution was the symbol of the beginning of the People. In England, the “unwritten” Constitution represented the organic link of the history of the English national soul binding together Past and Future. On the Continent, Constitution represented the gathering point of all anti-traditionary forces, the break with the organic Past, and the attempt to destroy State and Society. In America, there was no tradition, but only a Constitution; in England Constitution and Tradition were synonymous; on the Continent, Constitution and Tradition were antitheses. In America, the practice of government was determined by the great fact that there was no State in America, and hence only private- and party-politics. In England, the practice of government was slowly developed over the centuries and the English Constitution merely is the record of this development. On the Continent, the practice of government, developed through centuries of tradition, was challenged root and branch by the Rationalistic Idea of substituting quantity for quality, wiping out History and Tradition, and substituting the rule of a reasonable piece of paper which would guarantee forever the rule of Reason, Humanity, Justice, and the rest of it. Consequently there were no forces opposed to the Constitution as such in America, and there are not today, while in Europe the traditionary forces were opposed to Constitutionalizing as such, since it was simply the symbol of anarchy.

465 Historical thinking is more interested in what is done with a written constitution than what it says, and the practice of government in America was actually quite independent of the Constitution, even though that document was constantly invoked by all party-politicians. In the first place, the Constitution did not recognize Parties, but only individuals. It did not foresee that political businesses would develop which would coerce the masses through employment of ideals, promises, and money. Nor did the Constitution recognize universal suffrage, since it was thought quite unnecessary to forbid a thing which was regarded by everyone at that time as synonymous with anarchy. If the Founding Fathers were to return, they would demand the abolition of Parties and their coercion of individuals, and forbid group participation in politics, as well as severely restricting the franchise by property, educational, racial, and social qualifications, since these restrictions were the actualities whose continuance was assumed by the authors of the American Constitution. The first administration in America was the Federalist government of Washington and Hamilton. Hamilton established already in 1791 the doctrine of “implied powers” in the central government, as a measure for strengthening the central government. This was, of course, entirely against the letter and spirit of the Constitution, which “delegated” certain powers to the central government, and reserved all other powers to the States. Thenceforth, two ideas separated out: the idea of a strong central government, and the “states’ rights” idea. This issue was the focus of secessionist movements, first in the Northern States, and later in the Southern States, and theoretical formulation of the War between the States, 1861–1865, was based on the right of a State to secede from the Union. The Federalist Chief Justice Marshall was the last representative

466 of the Federalist tradition in the government. He established the unique idea in America that laws can be upset by the judicial system, which can declare them “unconstitutional.” This device was to play a large role in American inner-politics during the 19th and 20th centuries. More than anything else, the decisions of this Justice strengthened the central government. But the technique he developed was of necessity limited; its efficacy was purely negative. It could unmake laws, but could not make them. This too was entirely against the Constitution, like Parties, conventions, wide suffrage, “implied powers” and the rule of private persons. This judicial usurpation was one more refutation of Rationalistic theories that Life can be planned on a piece of paper and then actualized, for the piece of paper had specified that the judiciary was to be separate from the legislative. Again, it was not logic, but History, which enabled Marshall to usurp this function of the judicial veto. Far back in colonial history, the idea of “paramount law” had emerged. At that time, it was simply an expression of the centrifugal political tendency in all colonies, for “paramount” law meant domestic law, as opposed to the law of the English King, which was supposed to be personal. The royal governors in the colonies came from Europe, while the judges in the colonies were native-born. Hence “paramount law,” and the establishment of the unique institution of “judicial review.” A corollary development of this old colonial idea was American legalism. Law in the colonies meant opposition to the Crown, and hence the lawyer became a sort of defender of the public. The Founding Fathers were mostly lawyers; the membership of the Constitutional Convention comprised almost exclusively lawyers. The Constitution was a lawyer’s document, with legal phraseology, and complete absence of political wisdom.

467 Judicial veto of legislation thus seemed quite natural in America and conquered a place for itself. Consequently the strange usage developed of referring all manner of problems to the legal system, to be handled on common law principles. The theory was that political, social, economic, racial, and other problems would thus receive an impartial treatment, free from any human bias. Law however is the result of politics. Every judiciary is created by a political regime. If the judiciary usurps power which makes it more or less independent, it has become political itself. But in either case, its decisions are the result of politics, cast into legal form. And thus the history of legalism in America, in the form of constitutional law, is simply a reflection of the economic-political history of America. Its first phase was a series of decisions strengthening the central government, an expression of Federalist policy. In the same tradition was the Dred Scott decision in 1857, which reflected the Southern viewpoint on slavery, since the Federalist idea was not abolitionist. After the complete victory of industrialism and Money, 1865, the decisions represent the viewpoint of industrial — and finance — capitalism. The rising capitalism of the labor-unions was continually frustrated by the Supreme Court. No less than 300 times, between 1870 and 1933, it struck down laws made by various States and the central government which were aimed at the plutocracy. The institution of judicial review could not have developed if there had been a strong central government or a true State. Nor could it have arisen except in a country dominated by economic activity, and lacking any real political issues. Before 1861, there was only one critical political issue, that of the balance of power between North and South. Between 1865 and 1933 there was no true political issue, but only party-politics,

468 which is merely private or group business in the form of inner-politics. The Dred Scott decision would not have been allowed to stand, had not the War of Secession broken out, since the North-South issue was really political, which means that it could not possibly be settled otherwise than by political negotiation or by war, but absolutely not by legalistic ritual. In 1933, a real political issue again took shape, and there was an unsuccessful attempt to solve it by legalistic means. In that year occurred the fateful Revolution, the seizure of the central power by the Culture-distorting group in America. The new regime did not at once dominate the judiciary, since it has life tenure of office. The judiciary vetoed every one of the principal internal measures of the new regime, until, in 1937, it was intimidated by the threat of creating enough new judges to outvote the opponents of the regime. Grant had successfully done this in 1870 to coerce a hostile Supreme Court, showing that judicial review was merely tolerated by the ruling forces in America so long as it was in their interests. After 1936 the Court soon passed into the control of the Revolution, and judicial veto of political measures was terminated. It may possibly be used as a slogan, or resurrected as a show, but the forces which the 20th century has let loose do not take legalism seriously. The weapon of judicial review in America possessed some conservative efficacy during the first onslaughts of the Revolution of 1933, but it was a negative defense. Only a creative movement can prevail against a determined Revolution, only politics can defeat politics. The “separation of powers” theory has worked out in practice to mean either the domination of all branches of the government by the same interests, or else the splitting of the branches between two opposing groups. The authoritarian spirit of the 20th century spells the end of attempts to “separate” the

469 powers of government. Empty theorizing may continue, but this method of politics is dead, in America as well as elsewhere. II During the whole 19th century — except for the political issue which created the Secession-War — America was a country without true politics. Inner-politics was simply business, and any group could engage in it to further its own economic or ideological interest. In addition to parties, the usage of “lobbies” developed. The lobby is the means of exerting pressure on legislators after election. Private groups send private representatives to the legislature and there they persuade office-holders, by bribes of votes and money, to support, introduce, or oppose, legislation. Agrarian groups, racial groups, economic groups, societies of every description, use this method. By this means the anti-alcohol societies introduced nation-wide prohibition of the manufacture, sale or transportation of alcoholic liquors. This political technique continues. After the defeat of the Federalist party, early in the 19th century, there was a constant trend toward widening the suffrage, supported by all parties, and only opposed by social-traditionary forces. Party always wants the widest possible suffrage, since this completely deprives the electorate of power. If ten men decide an election, they all have some power, at least, but if ten million comprise the electorate, the masses deprive the higher elements of any significance. The inner development of America has followed the invariable pattern of Democracy, observable in all Cultures and all States. Party-politics is tied to commercialism, Rationalism, Materialism, economic activity. With the Spirit of the Age of Resurgence of Authority, party-politics gives way to authoritarian

470 forms, regardless of theories or techniques employed. The power is simply there for an ambitious man or group to take. As the American Revolution of 1933 shows, this group can even be Culturally alien. The actual technique for instituting authoritarian rule in America was instructive: the two established parties, Republican and Democratic had enjoyed, under various names, a monopoly of inner-politics for a century. It was simple for a group determined on the seizure and maintenance of absolute power to penetrate both of these older formations, and so bring under its control the entire means of expression of internal politics. Only two candidates — or, rarely, three — could be nominated for the Presidency. If the same group nominated them all, it was secure against all means of eviction save revolution by force. This was done, and the result was shown by the elections of 1936, 1940, 1944 and 1948. During the 19th century of economic obsession in America, the idea of instilling efficiency into any phase of the public political life occurred to no one. The situation was allowed to develop in which forty-eight administrative units, theoretically “sovereign,” are maintained, each making its own laws on all subjects, levying its own taxes, operating its own educational system, judiciary, police, and economic program. Within the continental United States, there were, in 1947, 75,000 units levying taxes. Each unit can create a public debt, and this must be done through the great private banking houses. In 1947, the total public indebtedness of America was a greater figure than the total assessed tax-valuation of the country. This wide distribution of the apparatus of public power has meant that exactly the opportunities of corruption and misrepresentation which inhere in the central government are reproduced in miniature thousands of times over. The American Revolution of 1933 was not directed toward

471 reorganizing this state of affairs, but was interested primarily in external affairs. The background of the intervention of this regime in world affairs is the history of American external affairs, after which the aims of the regime will be shown in detail.

472 The History of American Imperialism America acquired its far-flung empire with less bloodshed than any previous conquering nation in the history of the planet. Every other power that has ever held sway over subject peoples has purchased its position with long and heavy warring. An empire cannot remain at peace. Peace and Empire exclude one another. The hardest war America ever fought was its first one, from 1775 to 1783. From Lexington to the Treaty of Paris was a long, bloody road, and one that at any time could have taken the opposite turning. The American regime of those days was not one of full coffers and vast resources that could join late in a war on the winning side of a world-wide coalition against one power. It was not in the enviable position of a gambler who can keep his winnings, but need not pay if he loses. Those leaders actually risked their lives in that war, and if they had lost a hangman’s noose would have been waiting for them. The people who have supplanted the descendants of these proto-Americans would in that case call them “war criminals,”

473 which is the name they devised for the defeated leaders in a war. For were they not “conspirators against humanity,” “wagers of aggressive war,” and the rest of it? Could not this small band of generals, propagandists, statesmen, ideologues, financiers, have been easily fitted into a courtroom for a year-long “trial” where a pre-determined judgment could have been passed upon them? They had no need, however, to fear any such performance, but they were legally traitors to their sovereign King, and a legal tribunal with actual jurisdiction could have been constituted against them. The American colonists were successful only because of aid from France and volunteer assistance from military men of high ability, like von Steuben, de Kalb, Lafayette, Pulaski. This foreign aid was decisive. England was involved elsewhere for bigger stakes, and was unable to devote sufficient military attention to the colonial uprising. Further contributing to the American effort was the internal English opposition which favored the colonies. The deliberate inactivity of General Howe is only one manifestation of this obstruction. This long, hard, war marked the beginning of American political independence. The thirteen colonies stretched snake-like along the Atlantic seaboard. The hinterland was claimed by European powers whose days of empire were numbered in the Western Hemisphere: France and Spain. The political decline of Spain was reflected by the revolutionary figures of Hidalgo, Iturbide, Bolivar, who were bringing about the dissolution of the Spanish empire in the Western hemisphere. France was driven, under Napoleon’s regime, to abandon the idea of a colonial empire which would replace the British empire overseas with a French one — Napoleon’s original idea — and to adopt instead the idea of a European empire, the rebuilding of the Holy Roman Empire, but directed this time from Paris. To

474 this end, the trifle of three million dollars was worth more to Napoleon than the vast Louisiana territory, and its purchase by the American union in 1803 was the most fantastic piece of luck any power has ever had. Frederick the Great had to fight seven heartbreaking years to gain tiny Silesia, and two more wars to hold it; Napoleon fought twenty years against six coalitions to control Western Europe; England paid a son for every square mile of its empire — and so on through the pages of imperial history. But America acquired an area the size of Western Europe for the price of a few ships-of-the-line. The latent Calvinism of the proto-American type regarded this, not as remarkable luck, but as a sign of predestination, of God’s grace. American boldness and Gothic instincts were shown by the Barbary War. This war demonstrated also that the human material in the colonies could produce the type demanded by successful imperialism: William Bainbridge, William Eaton, Edward Preble, Stephen Decatur. The War of 1812 was another unbelievable piece of luck. Again Napoleon was fighting for American empire. England, involved to the hilt with the Colossus of the continent, was not even able to exploit its superior military position in America, and in spite of its military defeat, America was the political victor in the treaty of Ghent, 1814. The acquisition of Florida in 1819 was the result of negotiation and not of war. Already at this time, the Austrian maxim could have been paraphrased for America: Bella gerant alii, tu, felix America, eme! The great Hamilton, at the very beginning of the union, had counseled the annexation of Cuba, and others demanded it during this decade, but it was not to become actual until 1900. But at this time, occurred an event that ranks with the great audacities of History: the manifesto to be known as the Monroe

475 Doctrine was delivered in the year 1823. This manifesto announced that America was preempting an entire half of the globe for itself. This “Doctrine” was supported by the British fleet, as a device to dissolve the Spanish colonial empire. If England had opposed this doctrine, it would have been stillborn, but it served British policy, and enlisted America in the service of England. This remained, however, unknown in America, where it was thought that the bold pronouncement had frightened all the powers of Europe, since none of them challenged it. Furthermore, South America presented an inherently uninteresting field for further imperialistic ventures by the powers, and it thus happened that a tradition of success was slowly established in American foreign policy. The Calvinistic feeling spread that America was predestined to rule whatso it would. Almost a century elapsed before the “doctrine” was challenged, and by that time, the military force was present in America which its maintenance presupposed. Simultaneously with the outer events, the “inner” imperialism, so to speak, continued unrelentingly. The aboriginal inhabitants of the continent, whose wishes were never consulted either by the European powers or by Americans, whether of the colonies or of the union, resisted unceasingly the steady westward drive of American imperialism. The answer of the Americans to this resistance by the Red Indians was the formula “The only good Indian is a dead Indian.” American merchants supplied the Indians with arms, powder, and shot, and thus the Indian wars continued down to the beginning of the 20th century. Despite the money-payments for which European powers had given up vast claims, the Indians relinquished theirs only to superior American force. At that time the American practice and theory were the same: Might makes Right. Treaty after treaty was made with Indian tribes laying down frontiers over

476 which Americans agreed not to pass. Each treaty was violated by the American imperial instinct. Such treaty violations gave rise to the Black Hawk War, the Seminole wars, and to a century-long series of wars which only ended with the political annihilation of the Indians. During the 30’s Americans had infiltrated into the Mexican Empire, and by a successful revolt, they separated the vast area of Texas from Mexico. Less than ten years had gone by before this area was annexed by the union. An area larger than any West-European power had been seized with only small-scale fighting. In 1842, by treaty with England, the northwest boundary was extended. Oregon was definitely incorporated in 1846. But meantime the imperial instinct looked from Texas toward the Pacific, over Mexico. It was decided to deprive Mexico of two-thirds of its territory, and since this could hardly be done by purchase or treaty, a war was planned. Mexico caused the war, by refusing to submit to American imperialistic demands. A short war ended in the dictate of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which stripped Mexico of its power. The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850 with England specifically referred to an American canal across Central America, and led first of all to the completion of an American railroad there in 1855. Japan was “opened” in 1853, over its feeble military resistance, to the commercial side of American imperialism. After the War of Secession, the American union smashed the French attempt to add Mexico to its empire, and allowed Maximilian to be shot by a revolutionary firing squad. Also shortly after that War, Alaska was acquired by Yankee imperialism. This territory, of almost a million quadrate kilometers, was purchased by America from Russia for a trivial sum. In the same decade the border with Mexico was again rounded

477 off, this time by a small money payment instead of a war, in the transaction known as the Gadsden Purchase. American imperialism was everywhere active during the second half of the 19th century: Hawaii, Chile, Cuba, Colombia, China, Japan, Siam, Samoa. The American fleet bombarded foreign ports at will in the colonial areas of the world, and sent landing parties ashore when necessary to secure submission to American commercial-imperialistic or territorial demands. In 1890 the last Sioux War was ended, and thereafter Indian resistance to American imperialism was scattered and local. Hawaii’s turn had come, and soon a “revolt” prepared Hawaii for American annexation. This was mere preparation for an imperialistic venture on a larger scale than anything yet attempted. In 1898, Spain’s possessions in the Carribean and Pacific were attacked. As a result of the Spanish-American War, most of Spain’s colonial empire was transferred to America, including the valuable Philippines and Cuba. In passing, the Pacific islands of Tutuila, Guam, Wake, Midway and Samoa had been annexed. II In all this, one thing must be noted: American imperialism was purely instinctive. It was neither intelligent nor intellectualized, like contemporary European imperialism. No public man ever advocated the building of an American empire, and few even recognized openly what was going on. It would in fact have been indignantly denied that America was an imperialistic power. It is true that the phrase “Manifest Destiny” as an apology for imperialism came into use around the turn of the 20th century, but there was no definite imperial policy or program. The colonies were acquired in a plan-less, purely

478 instinctive fashion, without regard to position, significance, or economic value. William Jennings Bryan in his speech on Imperialism, August 8, 1900, did warn America against entering on a career of empire because it would destroy the American form of government, saying, “We cannot repudiate the principle of self-government in the Phillipines without weakening that principle here.” But he was not heard, and the tradition of confidence that had taken root during a century of successful imperialistic ventures without a setback was not to be undermined by a minatory speech. Nor was the opposite aspect of Bryan’s warning heard. What he meant by “self-government” was the habit of class war, constitutionalized civil war, freedom for everyone to gouge and exploit everyone else within the limits of the criminal law. Thus his admonition meant: an imperial nation cannot have internal disorganization and formlessness. There was no class however in America interested in anything else except self-enrichment, and so no one concerned himself with such questions except a few writers like Homer Lea. Imperial situations are ever-changing, and one must be prepared for reverses. In that case, the home conditions must also be in order if the outer developments are to be mastered. In a country where even the word politics was completely misunderstood, and meant corrupt economics, it could not be expected that the political wisdom would be present that would inform the leadership that empire means war, and war presupposes internal order. In very fact, there was no leadership to tell. Every few years a new group of representatives of private economic interests were installed in the administration of the government, and there was no traditional policy, internal or external. There was no agreement on what was fundamental to America’s interests, what would be casus belli, which powers were natural

479 allies, which naturally inimical. The leaders at any one time were mainly self-interested, obsessed with the grand problem of perpetuating their tenure of office. But American luck continued. Although isolated in its hemisphere, in the sense that no world power could afford to attack it, nevertheless America was not isolated in the sense that it could not send its gunboats and landing parties all over the colonial world on imperialistic adventures. Furthermore, as the Spanish War showed, America could easily defeat any European power in the Western Hemisphere. The Spanish-American War marked, what the War of Secession had foreshadowed, the emergence of America as a world-power. This made seven world-powers at that time; the others being England, France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Japan. Among these, only Russia, Germany, and England were in the first rank. America was excluded solely by reason of its geographical isolation. It could act against a world power in the Eastern hemisphere only with allies, and in a subordinate role. This was the situation at the beginning of the 20th century, the Age of Annihilation-Wars. For a full century — 1800–1900 — America had been engaged in imperialism, in the Caribbean, in South and Central America, all over the Pacific, and in the Far East. The sphere of American military influence was by 1900 larger than that of any other power except England. It had not in any way condensed or formed its empire, because of the purely instinctive nature of American imperialism. Thus Canada, for instance, although defenseless and contiguous to the base for power, had not been politically incorporated into the American Empire. Nor had Mexico. The American instinct was content merely to be stronger within a certain sphere than any other power, so that its economic ascendancy was assured there. Empire-building, in

480 the European sense, was not known in America. The idea of a grand power structure was not understood. The American Empire merely grew, through lack of resistance to American imperial instinct. For its empire, America had fought only one large-scale war. The first war, that of 1775, was for independence, and the War of 1812 is more accurately called the Second War for Independence. The War of Secession extended the Yankee empire southward, removing an emerging power from the North American continent, and this was the sole serious imperial war Yankee America had to undertake in its century of empire-building. For the landing parties all over Central America, the Mexican War, the fighting in Japan, China, and in the Pacific islands, the Spanish War, all had had slight casualties. Never before had an imperial power acquired so much territory and influence for such a trivial price in blood. Yet this was not understood, either in Europe or in America. Americans were either embarrassed or smug about their empire. Europeans either did not know about it, or thought it was the result of wise and mature political-thinking. Neither Europeans nor Americans wrote or thought much about the new world-power, its potentialities, its soul, its imperial abilities. Other parts of the world understood American imperialism better, and Japan in particular noted the lack of political thinking in America which made it capable of an entirely negative policy, one against its own interests. Certainly no power in Europe, no government, no person, in 1900 thought that it was within the realm of possibility that within two decades an American army of two millions would be transported across the Atlantic to fight in an intra-European war. Keen political thinking in America would have seen that

481 American imperialism was furthered by the mutual concern of all the other world-powers with the situation in the other hemisphere. This allowed America to proceed with imperialism in the Western hemisphere without the interference of any other world-power. Every other power, even England, was helpless to frustrate American actions in the Western Hemisphere. But there was no American ruling class, no Idea, no Nation, no State. American imperialism was not a rationalized, planned effort, but a fortuitous agglomeration resulting from an imperialistic instinct at work against weak opposition, and with a background of luck. Yankee financiers were not interested in creating a grand political structure which would stretch from Bering Straits to Cape Horn, nor in building any American empire whatever. Their personal interests were not only uppermost, but exclusive with them. The political leaders of America were dependent for their tenure of office on the financiers by 1900, for finance had by that time assumed dominance over industry and transportation. And the greatest financial coups were not to be made in South or Central American affairs, but in West-European affairs.

482 American Imperialism in the Age of Annihilation Wars At this period, the Western Civilization stood before the great turning-point of the First World War. This great epoch was to mark the demise of an historical phase, and the beginning of another. The Age of Rationalism, of Materialism, of Criticism, of Economics, of Democracy and Parliamentarism, in short the first phase of the Civilization Crisis, was coming to an end, and the Crisis was about to be dissolved in the new Age, that of Absolute Politics, of Authority, of Historicism. New currents had appeared in all spheres of Western life, manifesting themselves more in the decadence or collapse of the forms of the older age, than in the appearance of the new forms. Only one man, the Philosopher of the coming Age, formulated them in their entirety. While he was preparing his work on the coming Age of Annihilation Wars, and delineating the form of the Future in all spheres of Life, the materialists were, from one standpoint or another, denying the possibility of a large-scale war, and even as they spoke, the First World War broke out, in August, 1914. The old Spanish traditions of cabinet-diplomacy gave their

483 last performance with the Austrian negotiations with Serbia in July, 1914, and then vanished forever from the Western Civilization. The War was only the political aspect of the transition from one Age into the next, but since Action, and not Thought, is decisive for Life, the War took up into itself the entire significance of the world-epoch. The Cultural aspect of the War was the passing of the 19th century stage into the 20th century stage of the Western Civilization. That meant the demise of the English world-Idea, and the triumph of the Prussian world-Idea, for England had been the Nation inwardly imbued with the Idea of the first phase of the Western Civilization — Rationalism, Materialism, the spirit of economics, parliamentarism, nationalism — and Prussia was the Nation destined to give to the 20th century its appropriate form. This conflict on the cultural plane was independent of any conflict on the political plane. Only one of these Ideas could triumph — only one expressed the Spirit of the New Age. The alternative to the Prussian Idea is chaos. The Prussian Idea could have triumphed on the cultural plane without a war between Prussia and England, in fact they could have been and remained allies for political purposes. The higher development is purely spiritual, and it could only have the result of Prussian victory — or chaos in the entire Western Civilization. The War was occasioned in a grotesque manner, by a Balkan assassination. Previous incidents, like that at Fashoda, could have occasioned the First World War, and in such case the distribution of powers would have been entirely different, and the results, both spiritual and political, would also. The form it did take — through no necessity whatever — was that of a coalition of all the powers in the world against Prussia-Germany, and its sole ally, Austria-Hungary.

484 Through connections formed before the War, the American financiers were committed to an English victory, and they were the real force in the American plutocracy. No public “politician” knew anything whatever of external affairs, since they could not relate them to their tenure of office, their sole concern. It was a fate for America that at this time there was an adventurer at the head of the government. He not only failed to oppose the demands of the bankers for American participation in the War on the side of England, but he had private notions of using the war to further his own unlimited ambition. He and his entourage projected the idea of a “league of nations” of which he would be the head. The English government gladly acquiesced, being in desperate military straits. Now emerges in full clarity the weakness of American Imperialism. The moment of a European War was obviously a time for American action in its own hemisphere. It was already at war with Mexico, and could have concluded this war without hearing a voice from any other world power. Or, on a higher plane, America could have offered its good offices to terminate a war that all Europe was obviously losing, to the benefit of Asia. America could even have brought the war to a close against the will of the belligerents, for it could have forced England to give up the war. But America pursued neither self-interest nor the interest of the Western Civilization. Now the population of America was to reap the fruit of America’s century of spiritual isolation, of insulation from History, from the sternness, harshness, cruelty and bitterness of History. Because America had fought only one hard war in its imperial history, because it had never been opposed by a great power, because it had acquired an enormous empire without any cost in blood, it had never developed any

485 political consciousness. The word politics was not understood, nor was the fact of the power-struggle. There was no State, the focus of power. There was no ruling class, the custodian of the State. There was no Tradition, the guiding consciousness of the Nation. There was no Nation, no Idea in whose service the population-stream of the continent lived. There was no Genius in politics, since there was no politics, but only unclean personal struggles for offices and bribes. There was only the group of bankers, and the hapless opportunist Wilson, dreaming of world-rule. The real, spiritual, significance of the War was known to no public person. Not even the superficial, purely political aspect of the War was understood. The closest thing to realism was found in Boise Penrose’s public demand to enter the war because America had become financially tied to an English victory, which did not seem to be maturing. If there had been a ruling class — a stratum dedicated by its existence to the actualization and service of the National Idea — America would either have remained out of the War, or have terminated it to save Europe. The atrocity-propaganda, the English monopoly of the news, the systematic efforts of private financial and social groups to bring about American intervention, would not have been allowed. A ruling-class tolerates no foreign propaganda or foreign political activity on the home soil. II The purely political aspect of the War was the struggle between two political powers, Germany and England. It wore this aspect for the first stage of the War. By 1916, the struggle had changed its nature, and a Pitt as Prime Minister would have seen it. By that time it was Western Europe against Asia, and

486 in particular Russia. During the first two years, Russia, and the host of other powers against Germany, were serving English policy. After that, England had passed into the secondary role, having been surpassed in power by Asia and America. Every ship that England lost increased the strength of America and Japan. Every English soldier that was killed increased the strength of Russia, India, China and Japan. England had arrived at the point where military victory could no longer result in political victory. Its only hope for emerging unbroken from the War was to conclude peace in 1916. Naturally the same was true of Germany. Every German ship that was sunk increased the strength of America and Japan, and every German battle-death increased Russian and Asiatic strength vis-à-vis the Western Civilization. The white Western nations could not afford the losses that Asia and Russia could easily replace. The Western Civilization was outnumbered at that time already five to one by the outer forces. By engaging in an internal war — England versus Germany — Europe was fighting collectively only for the victory of Asia, Russia and America. None-of this was seen by responsible persons in America. A few thinkers and writers, like Frank Harris and John W. Burgess, saw more deeply into the real issues than any public man. Of these, only William Jennings Bryan opposed effectively for a time the trend toward intervention. For what had the war to do with American imperialism? What could America gain from the war? Europe was not the enemy of America; both political realities, and the cultural bond prevented that. Asia — Japan and Russia — were not America’s allies, that it was interested in their victory. There was nothing to be gained, from America’s standpoint, by participation on either side of the European War. This intervention did come about simply because there was

487 no such thing as America. There were only private groups, economically self-interested, a loose government representing the strongest of these, and a prevalent total incomprehension of the world of politics and of the unity and destiny of the West. This was the weakness of American Imperialism: no plan, no tradition, no policy, no design, no organization. The English policy against Germany was the same it had used against Napoleon: the “Balance of Power” policy, by which the continent was to be kept divided into two groups of equal power, so that in every war English power would be decisive. Even by 1914, this policy was quite stupid and old-fashioned, for the increase of Russian power had superseded it. Those who had looked beneath the thin veneer of Western Culture, by virtue of which alone Russia belonged to the Western State-system, and who had the discernment to assess rightly the snarling Asiatic nihilism under that tenuous crust, knew that the long-range interests of the nations of Western Europe were identical, and that the continuance of petty-statism and intra-European wars would be fatal to Europe’s monopolistic power position in the world, and to each European State. This sort of thing was utterly unknown, unsuspected, undreamed-of, in economically obsessed America. When the war did come, the populace reacted with a carnival-spirit, as if to a new type of public game or sport. Nor did America learn anything about politics from the war. Its losses were almost nothing — although, proportionate to the length of front and length of time, they were greater than any European power’s losses — and its concluding idea was that it had won the war. Actually, of course, the war was a defeat for America, since it was not in any way involved in the War. The American situation was neutral, regardless of any intervention policy whatever. After the war, America collaborated with the powers of

488 Europe, including Germany, in opposing Asiatic Bolshevism in Russia. America dispatched two expeditionary forces, one to Eastern Siberia and one to Northern Russia, to fight the Bolshevism that the European War had unchained against Europe. Every bit of material, and every life, that America had given to the War was a complete loss from the American standpoint. True, it had emerged from the war with vastly more power than it had entered it, just as had Russia and Japan. But it proceeded to throw this power away at the Versailles Conference and the Washington Naval Conference. Not understanding power, it had remained unconscious of the new world-power distribution resulting from the war. It flung away its new power without knowing it. This ignorance was on a national scale, but was also individual. The ambitious ideal-monger Wilson, who set out to remap the world, had only the most general notions of European geography, ethnography, and history. The balance of Europe’s economy was unknown to him, and he even had no idea of what belonged to the Western Civilization and what did not. He regarded Serbia and Poland, for instance, as Western “nations.” America learned nothing from the war because it had been, it thought, “victorious,” and this pragmatic test proved the soundness of its policy. By throwing away its new political power, it showed that it did not grasp the fundamental that war is waged to increase power. If any other power had behaved as America did — i.e., fought against its own national interest in a World War — it would have been ruined, and probably partitioned by its neighbors. This could not happen to America because of its isolation in its hemisphere. It is of secondary importance, but nevertheless must be noticed, that the official propaganda in America was nothing deeper than the slogan that “the world must be made safe for

489 democracy.” It was not found necessary to link up American policy with American interests. This is sufficient testimony to the primitivity of American political thinking. No mention of the crisis in the Western Civilization, of the form of the Future, of any issue whatever. War for war’s sake. It was the same compulsion that Lincoln had had, to inject an ideological issue into wars. Every war must somehow involve “democracy.” If necessary, Tsarist Russia, or Bolshevik Russia, figures as a “democracy.” The only group in America — outside of the few brains who think independently, and who comprise America’s hope for the Future — which was not subject to these idealistic slogans and catchwords was that of the financiers. To them, ideals are commodities which Money can buy. Had they not done it? America could not have lost the First World War in a military sense, just as it could not have won in a political sense. In one word, the American intervention in the First World War was a venture into political Unreality. The American delegates at the Versailles Conference did not know what the nature of the gathering was. They regarded it as some sort of theologico-judicial tribunal where moral questions were being decided. This collective hallucination, which the European delegates did nothing to disturb, resulted in the strange moralistic terminology of the Versailles Dictate. The vocabulary of this Dictate was American, the provisions were English. The Americans were writing, as they thought, an epilogue to History, a sequel to the last of all wars forever. The English were preparing their initial positions for the next war. III The net result of the Versailles Conference was a complete failure for Europe. The petty-states retained their political sovereignty

490 vis-à-vis one another; the transfer of power to areas outside of Europe was thus confirmed. The ground was laid for a Second World War on the exact lines of the First. To make more occasions for its outbreak, a host of microscopic “States” were created. Small-space thinking was the order of the day. Old-fashioned nationalism, which had brought the entire West to a colossal defeat, was reaffirmed. The stupid ideology of Wilson and his entourage was written into European political documents. Questions of “guilt” were introduced into politics, along with “international morality,” “sanctity of treaties,” and similar asininities. Yet towering over the whole landscape was the great fact: all Europe, and particularly England, had lost the war. In the new world-picture, there were four powers: Russia, America, Japan, and England. The strongest power, if it had only known it, was America, but, as we have seen, it relinquished most of its new power. The historical fact that had been demonstrated, however — the certainty of complete American ascendancy in any Anglo-American alliance — was not to be withdrawn, and remained there for the political instruction of all Europe. The result of the European debacle was a powerful negative reaction throughout the American population. The soul of the American people turned with disgust against the European adventure, and no alert politician dared advocate America’s entry into the “league of nations,” or any of its appurtenances. The bankers had won the war, and had no interest in Wilson’s personal world-rule ambitions. But this-reaction was not to be taken as an abandonment of American imperialism. That cannot be abandoned, coming as it does from the instinct of the People-soul. The War was detested precisely because it had been off the road of imperialism.

491 The American imperial march continued. American marines and naval forces continued to move about the coasts of the Carribean and the Pacific, bombarding, and landing troops, just as they had done for the previous century. Chinese ports were attacked, but no longer Japanese ports, for the First World War had made Japan into a Great Power, despite the fact that its war effort was nil. Nicaragua was attacked and occupied for years by American forces in the 20’s. Hardly had the troops in Nicaragua reached their objectives when America, allied with Japan, attacked China in 1927. The occasion of the war was Chinese resistance to Japanese and American commercial imperialism. Heavy reprisals were administered for the shelling of an American oil plant at Nanking. While it was engaged in imperialistic fighting, America sponsored the Kellogg Pact. This famous treaty was supposed to do away with war. The mere fact that numerous Western governments signed this elaborate piece of nonsense was a grave sign of the sickness of the Western Civilization. Together with the political defeat of all Europe, a surface-victory had also been gained in the First World War by the 19th century Idea over that of the 20th century. The result was chaos in Western Europe after the First World War — complete disorganization, lack of public comprehension of the new economic, social, spiritual and political problems created by the forward development of the Civilization, and as a result of the debacle of the War. American commercial imperialism was busy in South and Central America during all this time. For instance, revolutions were brought about in Panama, Peru, Chile, Paraguay, and Salvador, all in the year 1931. Another revolution was brought about in Chile the following year. In 1931, private American forces exerted strong influence on the Spanish situation, and

492 helped create the situation which was to result in the Civil War of 1936–1939. Cuba was another country — nominally independent — which felt American imperialism. American imperialism followed, after as before the First World War, the same double pattern: continual grasping after more power on further horizons on the one hand; complete inability to organize, plan, or intellectualize this conquest, on the other hand. As an example of the confusion, there was the ideology of “non-recognition,” according to which America would not “recognize” — whatever that means — the acquisition by another power of territory by “force of arms.” And yet the entire American empire, including its original base, was acquired as the result of American armed force. This includes the purchases, which were only sold to America because of American military preponderance in its part of the globe. But to touch upon this subject is to arrive at the American Revolution of 1933.

493 The American Revolution of 1933 The American war for independence, 1775–1783, was regarded by two different types of participants in two different aspects. The creative leader-types, like Hamilton, Washington, Franklin, Rutledge, saw it as an international war, between an American nation, in the formative stage, and England. This American nation was to them a new Idea, and the various ideological slogans and ideals which were used as propaganda material were not the essence, but only the temporary clothing of the new national Idea. For under-types like Samuel Adams, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson, however, the war was a class war, and the Independence-Idea was only a technique for actualizing the equality ideals of Rationalistic literature. The implementation of these equality ideals has always taken the form of jealousy, hatred, and social destruction, in America and in Europe. The class-warriors regarded the war as a struggle for equality, not a fight for American national independence. They hated monarchy, leadership, discipline, quality, aristocracy, anything superior and creative.

494 The Nation-Idea immanent in the minds of the creators, led by Hamilton, was the healthy and natural organic ranking of the population from the top down, with a monarch and aristocracy at the top, educated from birth to the idea of service of the National-Idea. They conceived, already at that early stage, the idea of a planned American Imperialism over the hinterland of the continent, and in the Carribean. The two ideas continued through the history of America. Class-war is an autopathic Culture-disease which arises with the beginnings of the Civilization-crisis, and is only finally liquidated with the end of that crisis, and the beginning of the second phase of Civilization, the Resurgence of Authority. America’s entire history up to now has been within the first organic phase of Civilization, which set in for the Western Culture about 1750, triumphed in 1800, and is now inwardly accomplished. Class-war has thus always been looked upon as natural and normal in America, instead of as the expression of a great Culture-crisis with an origin, direction, and end. The class-war forces, led by Jefferson at the time of the founding of the American union, in 1789, have been in the unique situation in which there was no ideology whatever opposed to them. Since the defeat of the Federalist Party, in 1828, there has been no spiritual, but only crude economic resistance to class-war in America. That it has proceeded to lengths of destruction in America to which it never could proceed in Europe is owing, however, not to this alone, but to the presence of extra-Western forces. These forces have intervened in the public life of America, and of necessity have distorted that life and warped it away from its Western origins. The very nature of a Colony, as has been seen, not only generates centrifugal political tendencies, but also weakens the

495 bond with the mother-soil of the Culture, whence the inner life of the Colony derives. This makes the Colonial area one of low Culture-sensitivity, and low resisting-power to extra-Cultural forces. It is this low resisting power to sub-Cultural and extra-Cultural forces that has brought about the obsession with economics, and has allowed the unparalleled influx of Cultural aliens to take place over the past half century. At the Constitutional Convention, 1787, Benjamin Franklin sought to have included in the projected Constitution a provision forever excluding the Jews from America. The “humanity” and “equality” ideologists, knowing nothing whatever of what Franklin had in mind, unacquainted completely with the Jew — for there were almost no Jews in America until a century later — rejected Franklin’s advice. His warning that if they did not, their descendants would be working for the Jews within two centuries was not heard. These ideologists only knew of “humanity,” and wished to ignore the vast difference between those human beings within and those without a given world-feeling. Immigration into America during the 19th century was from all parts of Western Europe, but principally from England, Germany, and Ireland. Toward the end of the century began the Jewish immigration, and shortly thereafter the influx of Balkan Slavs, Russians, and Eastern Mediterranean peoples. Feeble defensive measures were taken, like the Immigration Act of 1890, which put a quota on populations from each European country, calculated so as to favor Northern European immigrants over Slavs and Levantines. None of this, however, affected the Jew, for, stemming from a different Culture, his movements are invisible statistically to Western nations. He came in under the English quota, the German quota, the Irish quota, and every other. In the outline of Culture-parasitism, the effect of the presence

496 of vast numbers of Negroes, Asiatics, and Indians upon the American life was traced. Added to these numbers are those of the Eastern European populations — excluding the Jews — who, although assimilable, have not been assimilated. The world-feeling of Rationalism, which begets Materialism, Money-obsession, decline of authority, and political pluralism, worked against assimilation, and as Culture-distorters increased in social power and significance, assimilation was deliberately held up in order to keep America in a spiritually disarticulated, divided, and chaotic condition. Defensive efforts on the part of Americans of nationalistic feelings to restrict or abolish immigration were frustrated by Culture-distortion. Between 1900 and 1915, fifteen million aliens immigrated into America. Few came from Western Europe. Nearly all were from South-eastern Europe, from Russia, Poland, and Asia Minor. Included in these masses were Jews, whose numbers are estimated in millions. The First World War interrupted the immigration-river, but it was resumed after the War, and was accelerated mightily by the European Revolution of 1933. The Jews who fled or were expelled from Europe went to America en masse. It is worth noting that the lower Culture-exclusiveness in colonial areas had resulted in Jews being treated for civil purposes the same as Europeans from 1737 onwards in the American colonies, whereas a century had to elapse before this Rationalistic policy triumphed completely on the home-soil of the Western Culture. The only reason for it in the colonies was of course the fact that there were no Jews, as a group, but only a few scattered individuals, who were regarded as curiosities. From 1890 on began the Jewish invasion of America. Within the next fifty years, the number of Jews in America increased from negligible proportions to a number estimated between 8

497 and 12 millions. New York City became in this period predominantly a Jewish capital. Of this Jewish immigration, approximately 80 per cent were Ashkenazic Jews. American reaction inevitably began against the phenomena which inevitably accompanied the immigration of these vast numbers with their own world-feeling, who immediately began to influence the American life in every sphere and on every plane. A clever propaganda making use of the American ideology to serve Jewish purposes was the answer to this reaction. America became a “melting pot,” after the phrase of the Jew Israel Zangwill, and the purely quantitative American ideology lent this picture convincingness in an America still in the money-obsession stage. The word “American” was changed by this same propaganda to mean an immigrant who had improved his personal circumstances by coming to America, and to exclude the native American who was displaced by the immigrant. If the latter showed resentment, he was called “un-American.” Thus native American movements like the second Ku Klux Klan, formed in 1915, as an expression of the reaction of the American organism to the presence of the foreign matter, were more or less successfully called “un-American” by the propaganda organs in America, which even by that time had come under strong Culture-distorting influences. The words “America” and “American” were stripped of all spiritual-national significance, and were given a purely ideological significance. Anyone who came to America was ipso facto an American, regardless of the facts that he retained his own language, lived in his own racial-national group, nourished his old connections with Russia, South-eastern Europe, or the Eastern Mediterranean, and had a purely economic relationship with America. Americans of native stock however, the representatives

498 before history of the new unit in the Western Civilization called the American People, were not ipso facto Americans. If they nourished any national feelings of exclusiveness whatever, they were “un-American.” This transvaluation of values is an invariable accompaniment of Culture-Distortion, and represents a superpersonal life-necessity of the Culture-distorting element. The values of the host-Culture, or host-colony, are hostile to the life of the Culture-distorter, and for him to adopt them would be to disappear as a higher unit. Assimilation of the Jews would mean that there would no longer be a Jewish Idea, a Jewish Culture-State-Nation-People-Religion-Race. In fighting against nationalistic feelings in America, the Jewish Idea is fighting for its continued existence against the hostile Western Civilization. It is a tribute to the political skill of the leaders of Jewry that they were able in the 20th century to identify their Jewish Idea with America, and to label the nationalism of America with the term “un-American.” II For the inner history of America, four epochs had great significance: 1789, 1828, 1865, 1933. 1789 marked the formation of the Union of the colonies, through the adoption of the Constitution. 1828 marked the final defeat of the Federalist Party, the sole authoritarian force in the Union. 1865 was the complete financialization of the continent, but also the formation of the specific character of the American People. With 1865, however, the last barrier to economic obsession was removed, and the road was paved that was to eventuate in the utter triumph of the Culture-distorter in 1933. Future Western history will write down this date as the year of the American Revolution — or more accurately as the first phase of the American Revolution — for in that year, Culture-distortion began to

499 penetrate the remaining spheres of American life, government, Army, administration, judiciary. Yet this epoch passed unnoticed — not only by the great mass of Americans, for that is not surprising — but also by many of the custodians of the American national feeling. On the surface, the profound meaning of events was not at once disclosed. To the population, and to the outer world, it looked as though there had been a mere change of administration, a substitution of one party-business for another. A gigantic revolution that in a European land would have brought about a war was slyly and invisibly put into effect in a politically-unconscious country. Considerable opposition was aroused by the new regime from the very start, for it embarked, from inner necessity, on a program hostile to, and in every way destructive of, the American national feelings. Keen political instincts in the Cultural-aliens had given them a complete mastery of the techniques of American party-contests, and they proceeded to monopolize the opposing party, so that thenceforward elections were mere pageantry, and no longer contained the possibility of a real change of government, but only the substitution of one Culture-distorting party for another. Early in the Revolution foreign affairs were adapted to the policy of the distorter. Bolshevik Russia was accorded diplomatic recognition by the regime in 1934, and Litvinov-Finkelstein was sent from Russia to congratulate the successful regime in Washington. This was the first step in the formation of the American-Bolshevist coalition against Europe. The regime was still in the process of consolidating its hold on power, and had to proceed with caution, since the possibility still existed in 1936 of a national rebellion in the old, elective form. Yielding to the popular concern with internal affairs, the

500 distorter conducted the “election” of 1936 on domestic issues. This was to be the last election in American history where even a remote possibility existed of a national revolution through the old voting technique. Thenceforward elections were to be managed in such a way that the Culture-distorting regime could perpetuate itself in power indefinitely by that means. III Culture-distortion in America, as elsewhere in the Western Civilization, was only able to twist, warp, and frustrate the soul of the host. It could neither kill it nor transform it. American autopathic tendencies, arising from the disintegratory influence of Rationalism and Materialism, are the source of the possibilities of which the Culture-distorter made use. His technique was to push them ever further in the direction of decadence, but at the same time he could always refer to Rationalistic doctrines, themselves products of the Civilization-crisis, as a semi-religious basis for his disintegratory work. Thus the “equality” rhetoric of the Independence Declaration of 1775, and pious platitudes from Lincoln and other party-politicians, were used as the basis of the “tolerance” propaganda which teaches Americans that they must not in any way, not even in thought, discriminate against the Jew. This propaganda is spread from the highest official places down to the level of home, school, and church. The Negro-movement is a powerful instrument of Culture-distortion, and was organized as such shortly after the advent to power in 1933. Similarly the numerous groups of recent alien provenance are artificially prevented from assimilating and becoming Americans, since every alien-thinking group in America is serviceable to Culture-distortion. Thus the Polish group, for

501 instance, was very useful in war-agitation in the Fall of 1939. The usefulness of these alien groups is easily imaginable when it is realized that in 1947 only ¾ of the entire population of America consists of whites born in America, that only 55 per cent of the population had both parents American-born, while more than 20 per cent had one foreign-born parent, and almost 15 per cent of the population consisted of foreign-born persons. More than one thousand foreign language newspapers and periodicals appear in America, in forty different foreign languages. The whole result has been to put the native American completely on the defensive, to confer a privileged position on the Culture-distorter, who embodies at the highest potential the idea of alienness, and to disintegrate progressively the American national feeling. Culture-distortion to this degree would not have been possible in Europe, because of the higher Culture-sensitivity and the higher exclusiveness of Europe, even under democratic-materialistic conditions. It is necessary to observe precisely the spiritual products of Culture-distortion in America, in every sphere of life, for the America that intervenes in Europe is not the true America, which still existed in 1890, but an empire consisting of a master-stratum with its own culture, and a great mass of subjects, comprising the Americans, and the almost equally numerous alien-thinking groups. The lower strata supply the soldiers who invade Europe, but the brains who decide belong to non-Americans.

502 World-Outlook The technique for eliminating American resistance to Culture-distortion has been uniformity. Every American has been made to dress alike, live alike, talk alike, behave alike, and think alike. The principle of uniformity regards personality as a danger and also as a burden. This great principle has been applied to every sphere of life. Advertising of a kind and on a scale unknown to Europe is part of the method of stamping out individualism. Everywhere is seen the same empty, smiling, face. The principle has above all been applied to the American woman, and in her dress, cosmetics, and behavior, she has been deprived of all individuality. A literature, vast and inclusive, has grown up on mechanizing and uniformizing all the problems and situations of life. Books are sold by the million to tell the American “How to Make Friends.” Other books tell him how to write letters, how to behave in public, how to make love, how to play games, how to uniformize his inner life, how many children to have, how to dress, even how to think. The same principle has been extended

503 to higher learning, and the viewpoint is nowhere disputed that every American boy and girl is entitled to a “college-education.” Only in America would it have been possible for a journalist to denounce higher physics because it was creating a type of aristocracy. A contest was recently held in America to find “Mr. Average Man.” General statistics were employed to find the center of population, marital distribution of the population, family-numbers, rural and urban distribution, and so forth. Finally a man and wife with two children in a medium-sized town were chosen as the “Average Family.” They were then given a trip to New York, were interviewed by the press, feted, solicited to endorse commercial products, and held up for the admiration of all those who fell short in any way of the desirable quality of averageness. Their habits at home, their life-adjustments generally were the subject of investigation, and then of generalizing. Having found the average man from the top down, his ideas and feelings were then generalized as the imperative-average thoughts and feelings. In the American “universities” husbands and wives attend lecture courses on marriage adjustment. Individualism must not even be countenanced in anything so personal as marriage. In America, the Culture-distorter has laid down one way of doing everything. The men change from felt hats to straw hats on one certain day of the year and on another certain day discard the straw hats. The civilian uniform is as rigorous — for each type of occasion — as the strictest military or liturgical garb. Departures from it are the subject of sneers, or interrogation. The arts have been coordinated into the master-plan. There is in America, with its 140,000,000, not a single continuing opera company, or a single continuous theater. What theater there is produces only “revues,” and journalistic propaganda plays.

504 For the rest, there is only the cinema, and it is, after all, the strongest single medium of the uniformizing of the American by the upper stratum of Culture-distorters. In a land which produced West, Stuart, and Copley, there is to-day not a single painter of public note who continues in the Western tradition. “Abstractions,” pictorial insanity, and preoccupation with ugliness monopolize the pictorial art. Music is seldom heard in America, having been replaced by the cultureless drum-beating of the Negro. As an American “musicologist” put it, “Jazz rhythm, taken from wild tribes, is at the same time refined and elementary and corresponds to the disposition of our modern soul. It incites us without pause, like the primitive drum-beating of the prayer-dancer. But it does not stop there. It must at the same time take account of the excitability of the modern psyche. We thirst for quickly exciting, constantly changing, stimuli. Music has an excellent, time-honored means of excitation, syncopation.” American literature, which produced Irving, Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, Thoreau and Poe, is today entirely represented by Culture-distorters who make Freudian and Marxist motives into plays and novels. American family life has been thoroughly disintegrated by the Culture-distorting regime. In the usual American home, the parents actually have less authority than the children. The schools enforce no discipline, nor do the churches. The function of forming the minds of the young has been abdicated by all in favor of the cinema. Marriage in America has been replaced by Divorce. This is said with no paradoxical intent. In the large cities, statistics show that one of every two marriages ends in divorce. Taking the country as a whole, the figure is one in three. This situation can no longer be described as Marriage, since the essence of

505 Marriage is its permanence. The divorce trade is a large business upon which lawyers, private detectives and other charlatans thrive, and from which the spiritual standards of the nation suffer, as reflected in the emotionally indifferent attitude of American children. The Western erotic, grounded in the chivalry of Gothic times, with the concomitant honor-imperative of the centuries of Western history, has been driven out. The ideal of Wedekind, the Culture-distorter who preached compulsory Bohemianism in Europe around the turn of the 20th century, has been realized by the Culture-distorting regime in America. Inverted Puritanism has arisen. In this new feeling, the Puritan outlook is retained in sexual matters only to scoff at it in the cinema and in literature. Baudelaire’s thesis “In evil only lies bliss” has been taken over by the distorter, and has resulted in the progressive disintegration of American morality in all spheres. In this effort, jazz music is a useful appurtenance, for this primitive beating is nothing but the expression of lust in the world of sound, a world which is capable of expressing all human emotions, both higher and lower. A part of this general perversion is the physical-youth-mania that has been spread abroad in America. Both men and women, but especially the latter are inwardly obsessed with the idea of remaining physically young in appearance. Advertising plays upon these fears and commercializes them. The “girl” is the ideal feminine type. The mature woman aspires to be a girl, but not vice versa. A “girl” cult has come into existence, which, together with cinema, revue, jazz, divorce, disintegration of the family, and uniformity, serves the vast purpose of destroying the national feelings of the American. Together with uniformity is the technique of excitement. The press presents every day new sensations. For the general

506 purpose, it is quite immaterial whether the sensation is a murder, a kidnapping, a government scandal, or a war-scare. But for particular, political purposes, the latter sensations are the most effective, and during the years of preparing the Second World War, the distorter administered every day a new “crisis.” The process increased until the population was ready to welcome the outbreak of war as a relief from the constantly mounting nervous tension. When the War did appear, the distorter immediately called it a “World War” despite the fact that only three political powers were engaged, and the strongest powers were not involved. It was, of course, intended to rule out the possibility in the American mind of any localizing of the War, and to prepare for American intervention. The straining after excitement, pleasure, and constant motion has created a vast night-life, a crime underworld which staggers the imagination of Europeans, and a hurrying from one thing to another which excludes the possibility of contemplation, or individual culture. Almost one per cent of the entire population makes its living from professional crime. The art of reading has been taken away from the Americans, since the idea is to “do something.” Individual culture is generally strangled under such conditions, and the prevailing mass-ideals impose limitations on the form of such personal culture as is attained. All history, all thought, all events, all examples, are used to prove the soundness of the ideal of mass-life, and of the American ideology. II In the Rationalistic and Materialistic atmosphere of 19th century America, there was only a very weak link with the sublime Western Gothic traditions of the spiritualized meaning

507 of life, but under the Culture-distorting regime since 1933, America has been completely disenchanted. On every plane, the ultimate reality of the world and life is materialistic. The aim of life is “happiness.” This must be so, since life itself is only a physico-chemical process, and articles appear which treat as imminent the discovery of a “formula” for life by “scientists.” The contractual side of the old Puritan religion, which regarded Man and God as keeping accounts with one another, has been pushed to its uttermost limits, and all living is simply changing legal relationships. Patriotism is simply a legal duty to the world-proposition called America, which has been equated with the mission of distorting the entire Western Civilization through a process of “educating” Europe. Heroism in the Western sense is unknown, and the hero whom the population admires is a capitalist en grand who has converted a great part of the public wealth into his private resources, or else a smiling film actor. Such a thing as a great spiritual movement or a national rising is not understood in America, first because it has had nothing of the kind in its history, and secondly, because the distorter has made all such things ridiculous. The American is taught that life is a process of cultivating friendly relations with all, joining as many clubs and secret societies as possible, and confining all his thought and effort to the personal plane. The “happy-end” is the ideal of life and literature. There is no thought of bearing up under the bitterest and most crushing blows of Fate. These are overcome by avoiding one’s glance. The lucky man, and not the man who has suffered in silence and become stronger, is the central figure in the happy-end literature. The opposition between the Western idea of Destiny-fulfillment and the Culture-distorter’s disintegrating substitute called

508 “happy-end” is actually the focal idea of the world-outlook that he wishes to force upon the prostrate American nation and its parent Western Civilization. The irreconcilability between these two ideas extends from the personal plane upward through national economy, society, State, religion and ethics. The great Western Life-feeling is the necessity of being ones self, of preserving that within one which cannot be compromised, which is synonymous with Soul, Destiny, Honor, Race. The distorter’s idea of “happy-end” is opportunistic, weak, degenerate, and revolting to the Western honor-feeling. The empty, smiling, face, the uniform mind, the senseless chasing after noise, movement, and sensation, the obsession with moneymaking and money-spending, the rejection of all spiritual standards of attainment — all this merely reflects the basic interpretation of Life as a seeking for a happy-end. For happiness one will compromise anything, give anything, sell anything. Happiness becomes synonymous with pursuit of economic and sexual motives. It absolutely excludes any profitless struggle against odds, merely in order to be one’s self. Understanding and respect for the tragedy of Life, the magic of Life, the power of the Idea, are precluded by the happy-end feeling. Any id