"Indeed, Thomas Woodrow Wilson is the father of most of the last century’s ills. His grand crusade gave the world the curse of Stalin and Hitler, which, in turn, fostered the fallacy of the Indispensable Nation and gave rise to Imperial Washington and its destructive projects of global Empire."
The author is a prominent American politician, businessman, publicist and author. He was Ronald Reagan's Budget Director, and a congressman from Michigan. He is a frequent commentator on the major financial TV networks on the state of the economy. You could describe him as America's financial conscience and scold - and he's been doing it for 40 years, he famously broke with Reagan over his budget-busting ways.
He writes frequently about the perversity of US policy towards Russia, and we reproduce his work here when he does. See the full archive of his articles on RI here.
This is an excellent series from Stockman considering the history of the last 100 years, chronicling how the US got into its present predicament of trying to run the world with an over-extended military. The original title of the series is 'Why the Empire Never Sleeps: The Indispensable Nation Folly'.
Part 1: America Spends $1 Trillion on its Military Every Year - and Has No Way to Pay for It
Part 2: US Entry into WWI Started Her Disastrous March to Empire
Stay tuned for Part 4.
Woodrow Wilson’s Folly gave rise to more than the 1,000 year flood of Nazi and Soviet totalitarianism and their state orchestrated campaigns of mass murder.
It also opened the door to massive, cheap war finance. And that baleful innovation has sustained the Empire long after Hitler and Stalin met their maker and the case for the Indispensable Nation had become ragged and threadbare.
In the context of American democracy – special interest dominated as it is – the greatest deterrents to imperial adventurism and war are the draft and taxes. Both bring home to the middle class voting public the cost of war in blood and treasure (theirs), and force politicians to justify the same in terms of tangible and compelling benefits to homeland security.
We leave the draft for another day, but do note that when the draft expired in 1970 what ended was not imperial wars – only middle class protests against them.
In fact, the Empire has learned to make do, happily, with essentially mercenary forces recruited from the left behind precincts of the rust belt and southeast and the opportunity deprived neighborhoods of urban America.
But even mercenaries, and the upkeep, infrastructure and weaponry of the expeditionary forces which they comprise, cost lots of money. And that would ordinarily be a giant problem for the Imperial City because the folks in the hinterlands have a deep and abiding allergy to high taxes.
As we explain below, however, Woodrow Wilson solved that problem, too, by drafting the printing press of the newly minted Federal Reserve for war finance duty.
So doing, he opened the Pandora’s box of Federal debt monetization by permitting the Fed to own government debt – a step strictly forbidden by the stringent 1913 enabling statute drafted by the legendary maestro of sound money, Congressman Carter Glass.
Needless to say, as a political matter printing money is a lot easier than taxing the people. And that’s especially true when the spending in question involves the machinations of Empire in distant lands spread about the planet at a time when citizens on the home front feel abused and over-taxed already.
To be sure, we happen to believe that the spending and tax burden on GDP could be far smaller than it is in the US today under a regime of true federalism, honest free markets and minimalist government intervention in social and economic life.
Still, compared to the rest of the developed world, the total US tax burden (Federal, state and local) is just 26% of GDP. That compares to an OECD average of 34% and upwards of 50% in many of the more "advanced" venues of European socialism (e.g. Belgium, France and Denmark).
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