(Audio Only) J. Michael Hill at the 2004 Constitution Party National Convention (June 25, 2004)

J. Michael Hill delivers "The American Empire" speech at the 2004 Constitution Party National Convention. This event was held from June 23-26, 2004, at the Valley Forge Convention Hall in Valley Forge, PA.

BACKGROUND:
"Dr. J. Michael Hill, of Alabama, is President of The League of the South and the author of Celtic Warfare and Fire & Sword. He is also a frequent lecturer on Southern cultural issues.

Dr. Hill's work with the League of the South has been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Review of Books, The Journal of Higher Education, The Mobile Register, The Village Voice, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, The Wall Street Journal, The Nashville Tennessean, The State (Columbia, SC), and many, many other publications. Dr. Hill is a frequent guest on television and radio talk shows and has recently appeared on both BBC Television and Fox News on behalf of the League."

TRANSCRIPT:
"America is no longer a federated, constitutional republic. It is now an empire. And the government that runs this empire ... is an organized criminal conspiracy. The worst fears of the Founding Fathers have come true, in spades. Not only have we had a Consolidated national government since Lee surrendered his army at Appomattox, but the ensuing century witnessed the expansion of Lincoln’s policies of conquest and reconstruction around the globe. What was first practiced on Southerners now is commonly practiced against anyone who opposes Washington DC’s messianic urge to make the world safe for democracy and multinational corporations.

Though the American Empire has been a long time aborning, the regime’s response to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks and the subsequent invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (and who’s next?) have stripped the mask off the monster.

In the midst of all the carnage and destruction, both here and abroad, that resulted from 9-11, two salient questions have remained buried by the Establishment media 1) Why does the U. S. have so many enemies throughout the world? and 2) Have we become an imperial power and, if so, by whose consent?

Could it be we have made so many enemies because we are today an empire with its tentacles in over 100 countries? Since the War Between the States, the American empire has increasingly thrown its weight around, first financially and now militarily. The Establishment elites who run and profit from the empire have committed themselves to a thoroughgoing reconstruction of the world in their own image. Such policies have alienated many peoples who simply do not wish to live in the mold foisted upon them by the American ruling class. Now, innocent Americans, Afghans, and Iraqis are paying the price—in blood—for our elites’ arrogance, hubris, and megalomania. In short, we have ignored the Founders’ sound advice and have gone hunting in search of distant dragons to slay. It is therefore long past time for us to return to a foreign policy based on vigilant neutrality and a defense policy based truly on defense rather than imperial ambition. We will return to neither as long as the Democrats or Republicans control this regime.

Americans take great offense when they themselves are wronged, but turn a blind eye when their own government wrongs others. No civilized person could approve what was done to Americans on 11 September 2001. But by the same standard, no just man could approve what we have done to innocent Serbs, Afghans, and Iraqis and anyone else who dares stand in the way of the American reconstruction of the entire globe. The list of wrongs the American empire has committed around the world is long, as are the memories of those who have suffered them. And one is left to wonder if all the turmoil, both at home and abroad, since 9-11 is not somehow a wake-up call to the “only remaining superpower” that indeed judgment is visited in history upon regimes that use their vast powers unjustly.

The past three years point to other national failures as well. Clearly, for all its imperial bluff and bluster, the American regime has demonstrated that it cannot protect its citizens in their homes and workplaces. But instead of getting rid of the inept politicians and bureaucrats who failed us, we give them more money and power and passively accept the notion that reducing liberty is the price for increasing security. But in the end, we will have neither liberty or security, and deservedly so.

In a flurry of post 9-11 activity, the Bush regime sought to reassure Americans that all that could be done was done to protect the country against future terrorist attacks. For now, all of this activity—the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the passage into law of the USA Patriot Act, and the establishment of the gargantuan Department of Homeland Security and its attendant police-state enormities—seems to have made most Americans feel more secure. We are being prepped for a long and expensive stay in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and our rulers tell us that it’s unavoidable if we are serious about winning what amounts to a perpetual “war” against terrorism.

Wanting to trust Bush, Americans have until recently refrained from posing tough questions to the regime. After all, we are told, “patriots” don’t rock the boat in a time of national crisis. But the blind faith Americans have shown towards the ruling elite is giving way to cynicism and doubt, and with good reason. Despite the NY Times and other establishment organs touting the virtues of a benign American Empire, Americans have learned a bit about the folks who are running the show, and they don’t particularly like what they see.

Just who are these latter-day mandarins who run the American Empire? Nearly all these Washington insiders are products of the Ivy League. They are the self-proclaimed “best and brightest,” born to rule, booted and spurred (to quote Mr. Jefferson), over the rest of us. They are traffickers in information and analysis; they produce nothing useful by anyone outside their own narrow class. But they command for themselves great power and influence by controlling the flow of and access to critical information. Moreover, they are involved in the often incestuous relations among government, the multinational corporations, the academy, the media, and the big non-profit foundations. As committed internationalists and proponents of global democracy, global capitalism, and empire they have no loyalty to any country, regional identity, State, or local community. They are truly a deracinated class—politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, lawyers, consultants, academics, corporate executives, media moguls—that abhors the traditions associated with place, kith and kin, and Christian culture. These well-paid sophisticates disdain true patriotism, Biblical ethics and mores, historical and cultural memory, ethnic and racial homogeneity within historic states, and, in the case of America, constitutional government. In short, they are enemies of all that we hold dear.

This imperial elite’s view of the world is based on narrow self and class interest, and such interests have been packaged rather innocuously for public consumption as “global democracy” and “global capitalism.” But these supranational elites do not define “democracy” as we would. We associate our so-called democratic institutions with the idea of the “consent of the governed.” This, however, is far from the meaning of “democracy” as it stands in the worldview of our imperial masters. For them, democracy is not a process worked out on the campaign trail and at the ballot box. Rather, it has more to do with results than with process. Democracy is an ideology that can be furthered only by certain acceptable social, cultural, economic, and political outcomes. For instance, if global democracy and global capitalism are to be the genuine articles, then they must successfully promote multiculturalism, diversity, tolerance, radical egalitarianism, open borders, the free flow of money and credit and good and services and labor. It goes without saying that these ideas serve to undermine the concept of national sovereignty and traditional cultures, including our own Western Christian culture.

A messianic American Empire dedicated to furthering global democracy and capitalism, and all the leftist ideologies and policies that inform it, has taken on the status of a true religion among our elites. Thus they stand in opposition to the Christian worldview that for long has dominated traditional America. The religion of our imperial elites is firmly grounded in the rationalistic philosophies of the 18th-century Enlightenment. Therefore, they believe that human progress, leading to utopia, can bring secular salvation to a world floundering in ignorance, bigotry, and superstition. As the high priests of this humanistic religion, the elites will allow no other gods before the omnipotent State. As Oz-like manipulators of the levers of the managerial regime (as columnist Sam Francis calls it), the elites see themselves as vastly superior in intellect and moral worth when compared with the common folk over whom they rule. When pundits speak of the post-Christian West, they speak of the acquiescence of the American hoi polloi to this imperial, socialist paradigm.

But do the secular, internationalist elites, committed as they are to a rationalistic, post-Christian order, really (as Irish patriot Michael Collins said of the British in Ireland) have the guts to run an empire. Take the Middle East, for instance. Militant Islam sees the U.S. as the “great Satan” and is determined to destroy Christianity and the nations that are historically Christian, particularly ours. Once upon a time, our Christian ancestors in Europe had no qualms about launching the Crusades or defending the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and the Iberian Peninsula against the spreading cancer of Islam. In that era, a vibrant, self-confident Christendom did not hesitate to assert itself against a competing religion sworn to its destruction (and that little fact has not changed). But we in the Christian West have changed. What remains today of Christendom is but a pale and emasculated image of its old self. The medieval monarchs and warrior-heroes who drove the Muslims from Spain, defeated Ali Pasha at Lepanto, and held the gates of Vienna have been replace in our own day by bleating men who proclaim Islam a religion of peace and worry more about hate crimes against Muslims and threats from the Council on Islamic American Relations than they do about securing our porous borders against real and potential Muslim terrorists.

In truth, today’s American Imperial elites are hamstrung by their own ideologies, if indeed their goal is to “save America.” Their commitment to multiculturalism, diversity, tolerance, and other left-wing pathologies precludes them from shutting down the borders and getting control of the immigration problem. It also prevents them from championing America as an historic place settled and developed by white, European Christians for their own posterity, a place our ancestors considered worth fighting for. But because of the pernicious influence of the elites on public opinion (they do after all, control the major newspapers, television, and the Hollywood film industry) through what we have come to call “political correctness” (in truth, it should be called Cultural Marxism), today’s emasculated Christians dare not utter a word about this “place” actually being ours by inheritance, and as such, closed off to those who do not share or respect our history, culture, and religious faith. They have bought the imperial elites’ mumbo jumbo about America’s uniqueness as a “Proposition Nation” whose creed is radical egalitarianism and individual autonomy. Not to put too fine a point on it, but those Bush-supporting Christians need to be awakened to cold, hard reality. And that reality is this: the revolution has come and gone and we are losing our country to an alien ruling class and an alien ideology. Empire is the natural result of this revolution.

But again, these imperial elites are hampered by their own prevailing ideology. That ideology cannot save America as we know it; rather, it can only destroy it. To believe that G. W. Bush’s gaggle of neo-conservative advisors are interested in protecting you and me from militant Islam or some other enemy we’ve made or shortly will make, is a fool’s game. Simply put, the Washington elites are not about to do the hard things necessary to defend us from foreign threats. To do so would undermine the very internationalist ideology on which they’ve risen to power.

If we, the common folk of America, are to survive then we must see to it for ourselves. To oppose the current problem of militant Islam, for instance, the first thing we must do is free ourselves from the grip of the imperial elites’ alien ideology and then declare to our enemies, especially Muslims who are prone to fly planes into tall buildings, that it is our intention, as Christians, to defend our God-given inheritance, at whatever cost. Also, we should tell them that we have no interest any longer in interfering in the Middle East on behalf of our perpetual client state, Israel. It seems to me that the Constitution Party is ideally situated to advocate this bold sea change in America’s foreign policy.

As Christians, we should desire peace whenever possible. To have peace, we must shed ourselves of empire and the elite class who have foisted it upon us. This means getting rid of Democrat and Republican rule. But if we are going to be an aggressive imperial power and conduct a perpetual war against Middle Eastern terrorist regimes, then let’s call the struggle with Islam what it truly is: a religious war. That is surely how they see it. Remember, the only peaceful Muslims are apostate Muslims. But unlike modern day Christianity, Islam does not tolerate the lukewarm. One wonders how soon the day will come, considering our wide-open borders and an immigration policy that encourages a massive influx of non-Christian and non-Western peoples, when these now-peaceful Muslims will become faithful Muslims. How many followers of Muhammad now residing in America, courtesy of our imperial rulers, are patiently awaiting the day when their number swell to the point that they can act on the tenets of their faith, which sees Christianity as the enemy and individual Christians as people who must either be converted or destroyed.

Knowing full well that most Muslims take their faith seriously, the imperial elites can only hope that American Christians will continue to take their faith lightly, elect candidates to office who will perpetuate the regnant leftist ideology, and consent meekly to send their sons and daughters off the fight wars to keep the world a safe place for godless liberalism and those who profit from its imposition around the world. Therefore, I believe the best and most effective way for Americans to dismantle the empire and return to a constitutional, federated republic is to take their Christian faith seriously and quit being apologists for a worldview and a regime sworn to the destruction of all they hold dear.

Voting for George W. Bush is going to get them more military adventurism, more bloodshed, more debt, more enemies, and thus more hatred of America abroad. It will not get them victory over an enemy that is everywhere and yet nowhere at the same time, nor will perpetual war secure them peace. There is but one candidate in this race who can stop the current imperial madness and return America to the vision of our Founders. There is but one candidate whom we can count on to oppose the Empire. It is Michael Anthony Peroutka."

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All material used falls under fair use of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (1998).
(Used under fair use, for commentary, education, criticism and satire.)

This video is for educational, entertainment and social commentary purposes only. The links provided are solely for copyright and sourcing purposes.

ATTRIBUTION:
* Constitution Party. "Convention Speakers". ConstitutionParty.org, May 2004.
* Peroutka, Michael. "J. Michael Hill "The American Empire" Speech". Peroutka2004.com, 17 Jul. 2004.