If the world lasts another 1,000 years, no doubt historians will be writing about the events of the past. In this post I’m going to jump ahead to the year 3010 and write a few things about the United States of America that historians will be cogitating over and hopefully learning from. Of course, since none of us will be alive 1,000 years from now, there’s no way to know if my prognostications will be correct. But perhaps this blog will still be around in cyberspace and historians can determine how accurate I’ve been
First of all, there will be no United States of America in 3010. There might not be one in 2110. A United States of North America is highly possible, and since the national language will be Spanish, the capital of the country will be Mexico City—as far away as possible from any gringos who might still be around, most of whom will probably be speaking French. China and Japan will still be countries 1,000 years from now because the Oriental people know how to build a society that lasts. Russia will probably still exist, simply because it’s too big for anybody to conquer. After World War VI, Europe will be more of a mud hole than it is today, and the experiments in nationalism in Africa will most likely fail and that continent will remain embroiled in tribalism and backwardness. The Middle East is not going to produce a world power because Islam is too divided. But frankly, I don’t really care about those latter regions. This post is supposed to be about the long-gone United States.
What I really want to do here is give the 3010 historians’ ranking of the worst Presidents the country ever had, those who played the biggest role in the disintegration and destruction of the United States. It’s fairly evident today (2010) that economics is what is going to sink this nation, so, in 3010, who will historians view as the greatest Presidential villains in America’s past?
1. The worst President will be Abraham Lincoln. He is the man who changed this country from what the Founding Fathers intended it to be. The United States was established as just that—united states, i.e, the states had sovereignty over the federal government except for the very few matters listed in the Constitution. The 10th Amendment clearly establishes state/people sovereignty. Lincoln destroyed that. Folks, the Civil War (or, more appropriately, The War for Southern Independence) was not fought over slavery; it was fought over a state’s right to secede from the Union. The Southern states believed, with imminent justification, that the federal government was usurping powers that, Constitutionally, belonged to the states. Given that Lincoln obviously intended to continue that trend, they seceded in order to form their own government. The South wasn’t trying to take over the national government; they were trying to leave it. The war was a battle of states’ rights vs. national government sovereignty. It is plain, by looking at the country today, which side won that war. The United States federal government can trump the states in anything the latter tries to do, and of course, the vast majority of what the federals do is wholly unconstitutional. The just-passed “health care bill” is a case in point. I defy anybody to show me anywhere in the Constitution where the national government is given the right to dictate American health care policy. But Congress doesn’t care in the least what the Constitution says, and most Americans don’t know what it says. So the feds can get away with whatever they want to. Lincoln began that process (initiated actually by Alexander Hamilton, but he was never President) by starting a war to prevent states from being sovereign in their governments. We see the fruits today.
Historians in 3010 will see slavery as a very small element in the Civil War; the institution was dying anyway, and it would have been abolished soon in the South, by Southerners, because it was simply not economically viable in an age of industrial revolution. Historians will look at what the Founders intended this country to be and see that it was the war of 1861-65 that changed it, and that it was the South who was trying to preserve it. And that region of the country was forced into a government they did not want to be in. New Englander Lysander Spooner, who was rabidly anti-slavery, still viciously castigated Lincoln for the war. Why, Spooner asked, free 4 million people only to enslave 9 million others? And Southerners being forced to support a government they did not believe in is not exactly a pristine definition of “freedom.” How many Americans today are being forced to support a health care law that they vehemently oppose? Freedom, anyone?
2. The second worst president will be Franklin Roosevelt. He started the modern welfare state, mainly with the Ponzi scheme called “Social Security”. Here we see the federal government taking greater control over the lives of people, robbing Americans of freedom, and beginning to send the country swirling into an economic pit that it will never escape.
3. Lyndon Johnson, the third worst president, only exacerbated what FDR did. The “Great Society,” the “war on poverty” accomplished, over the long haul, nothing but deepening the debt of the country, putting the United States at the mercy of foreigners who controlled that debt. Being at somebody else’s mercy is not a good way to produce long-term stability. The “Great Society” also created more dependent people, people who would not take care of themselves and thus were parasites off the productive sectors of society. As the following decades progressed, more and more dependents were created, draining more and more needed job-creating capital, furthering weakening the economic base of the country. The productive sectors can support the non-productive sectors for only so long and for only so much money. Johnson’s expansive welfare state simply hurried this process along.
4. The fourth worst president will be our current one, Barack Obama, who is simply following in the steps of FDR and LBJ. The expanded governmental role in one-sixth of the American economy might be the final straw that, economically, razes this country. For Obama to flat out lie—and there is no other word for it, the man is lying and knows he is doing so—by saying that “Obamacare” will actually cut the federal deficit is an insult to anyone with even a modicum of intelligence. LBJ said that Medicare wouldn’t cost very much, either. Obama has other plans to economically disassemble the United States, which will demand an ever-greater burden on producers and eventually totally bankrupt the nation. An attempt to patch up the problem with a “North American Union” is likely, and will probably have as much success as the floundering European Union.
Regarding the United States of America, historians in 3010 will sigh over a noble experiment in human freedom which sadly went amiss for the very reasons most other such experiments have failed: the love that men have for power and control over others. A 250-300 year existence for the United States is, historically, not really a very long life; 1,000 years from now, it will seem fairly petty. Hopefully, people in 3010 can look back at our disastrous mistakes and learn from them. But frankly, I doubt they will, for if history teaches anything, it teaches that men learn nothing from history.