An immutable law of nature is that all living things evolve. Man has reveled in this, often seeking to speed up or redirect this transformation through the process of Revolution. In explaining, promoting, and ultimately bringing about change, many Revolutionaries turned to history, for it above all else can reveal the true nature and source of a people’s oppression. In building an atmosphere of change then, history is the first tool the Revolutionary must master.

The United States of America was the consequence of a Revolutionary culture. In the 1750s politically conscious colonists in Massachusetts found that English authority was growing more intrusive by the day. For years these concerned activists held positions in local government, published essays about the value of independence, and organized public demonstrations against unreasonable taxes in order to challenge British oppression. Their work sparked a broad movement of change within the English colonies, and after struggling against the tyranny of a European monarch for more than a decade, American freedom fighters used the past to justify their Revolution by outlining the “oppressive history” of King George III, describing it as one of “repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny.” This was the Declaration of Independence. By the end of what became the Revolutionary War, this document had become the basis for the American way of life. Whereas Britain was ruled by a monarch, America would be governed by a congress; though England had regulated colonial commerce, the states would enjoy free trade; and while the rights of colonists were conditional, American citizens possessed rights which were unalienable. With democracy as the cornerstone of the new republic, its nature was fundamental to Revolution.

Today the United States is unrivaled in the world. Its economy is larger than that of Japan, Germany, China, Russia and the United Kingdom combined. Its army is unmatched; America spends more on its military than Japan, Germany, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, India, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and Israel combined. Still, all is not well, as the nation is entering an economic crisis unlike any since the Great Depression. While the federal government flirts with bankruptcy, it is embroiled in conflicts around the world, most notably the Middle East. It is apparent to all of us that we must change.

Like our founding fathers centuries ago, I believe history can be the premise for the change we so dearly desire. After all, a cursory glance at the past shows that today’s events are, in many ways, mere repetitions of practices set in motion over 200 years ago. George Washington was the first president to create debt to fund a war of conquest. Thomas Jefferson was the first chief executive to award government money to corporate allies. James K. Polk was the first commander-in-chief to deceive the public to justify war. All of them adopted the same policy: expansion by any means, even at the cost of betraying the Revolutionary principles America was founded on. Thus, a close examination of our past proves that the problems we face are not the product of any single war or the policies of one president, and that the change we seek calls for more action than we can achieve through choosing a new leader or rethinking a war strategy. The situation is much graver than that.

In the belief that history can inspire and affect change, Paths to Power will outline America’s growth from a Revolutionary republic to a counter-revolutionary empire. By recounting aspects and episodes of our history long forgotten, neglected or omitted, we will find that our condition in the twenty-first century is nothing short of what imperialist forces envisaged long ago, and that it is precisely this imperious vision that is ruining the United States today.

“The American (counter) Revolution” will explain how American patriots defeated the most powerful empire in the world before an imperialist faction betrayed the new republic shortly after the Revolutionary War. The movement towards liberation which we know today as the American Revolution failed less than a decade after the inception of an independent American government. But this was not the result of a foreign power or an alien saboteur; it was a group of self-interested Americans who helped destroy the republic in favor of creating a system which could be manipulated by people and groups loyal only to the cause of expansion, even if it meant denying the unalienable rights of others. Theirs was a nation built upon corporate support, military domination and policies driven by both, wherein a small group dictated the nation’s direction. Under this guise, future leaders made the United States into the very thing Revolutionaries fought to destroy--empire.

“Origins of Empire” will outline the process by which the counter-revolutionary system enacted shortly after the American Revolution served the cause of imperialism through the nineteenth century. Centuries before Halliburton was awarded no-bid contracts and deficit spending was used to fund a war in Iraq, early American presidents called upon banks and corporations to support America’s expansion. Through the nineteenth century, powerful bankers and financiers profited from westward growth and therefore supported the cause even at the cost of war, suffering and grief. In fact, the deadliest conflict ever fought inside the United States helped produce a class of wealth never before seen in America, one which would come to dominate the scope of American expansion into the twentieth century.

“The World’s Empire” explains how the forces of imperialism turned their attention to foreign marketplaces as the American economy expanded beyond its own demand early in the twentieth century. Leaders of finance and banking conspired to initiate the creation of a central banking model which would act as a tool of expansion well into the twentieth century. They also provoked the involvement of the United States in the First World War. Years later, the interests of this duplicitous group helped bring about an international economic depression spurred on by the central bank they helped create. During this time, the same businessmen and bankers who financed the world war and triggered the global recession empowered the figures which would begin the largest conflict in world history. Through this toil, however, America emerged as the most powerful nation in the world and would behave as such for years to come.

“A Policy of Deception” summarizes a period in American political history marred by secrecy, fraud, misinformation and lies. While the power of the United States was unmatched after the Second World War, imperialist forces both inside and outside the world of government used the antics of a rival nation to justify American imperialism over the next forty years. In the tradition of their predecessors, chief executives during the ostensible ‘Cold War’ used all means at their disposal--coups, wars, and counter-revolutions--to protect and promote the interests of powerful corporate moguls seeking to situate themselves throughout the world. These schemes were safely hidden from the American public. In other cases presidents used outright fabrications to justify large-scale military operations. Even when the fanciful war against communism ended in the 1990s, imperialists remained committed to the cause of expansion and searched for a new pretext through which to justify American dominance in the next century.

“The Rise of American Terrorism” will explain how despondent expansionists orchestrated one of the most notorious operations in American political history. As a moderate head of state guided the United States away from imperialist ventures, despots found themselves outside the arena of the federal government for the first time in decades. In this capacity, a frustrated faction used a former intelligence asset turned-terrorist to carry out deadly attacks against American targets which would reaffirm imperial values in official government policy. At the same time, this group of conspirators aligned itself with the son of a former commander-in-chief and helped him steal a presidential victory in the last election of the century. Then, on a fateful September day, terrorists acting with the sponsorship of the new regime executed the deadliest attack on American soil since the Civil War. The war on terror--the next pretext for preeminence--had begun. Corporate backers of the new platform scored record profits as the president embarked on a unilateral campaign of war. The brazen actions of imperialist leadership compelled other powerful countries to challenge the belligerence of the world’s most powerful nation. Although this has brought on a domestic recession, the international backlash against the American Empire has only just begun to manifest itself and its full effect has not yet unfolded. The dissolution of the empire is assured, and with it, the fate of us all.

Our history reveals a pattern of imperialism which explains our failing condition today. Because our government has functioned as a component in a corroding system of empire, only we can end America’s despotic cycle and honor the principles under which the nation was forged in 1776. Yet just as surely as our history exposes the true cause of our condition, so too does it illuminate a path of change which we can embark upon to discover the genuine spirit of the republic.

“Revolution2” will summarize the poignant and often overlooked aspects of the struggle to honor the principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence. During the First American Revolution, freedom fighters failed to protect the “unalienable rights” of all the “good People of these Colonies.” Those that it neglected sought to make right what others could not, as Africans and African-Americans oppressed by the tyranny of slavery and race discrimination challenged the nation to rethink its interpretation of the guiding principle that “all men are created equal.” Against a counter-revolutionary system, however, acting for change proved to be a long, arduous struggle which lasted almost two centuries.

The black Revolution for civil rights as guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence had at its core an inherent devotion to challenging racial oppression. But as the movement wore on through the latter half of the twentieth century, African-American activists found that their struggle for freedom involved more than bigotry, segregation or discrimination; theirs was a movement which would, in its finality, challenge America’s longstanding policy of imperialism. “Helmsmen of the Revolution” will detail the process through which one organization came to find that the origin of black oppression was not racism, Jim Crow, or the ghetto--it was the American Empire. With this realization, these Revolutionaries devoted themselves not simply to the liberation of black America, but to emancipating the nation from the clutches of an empire. Their struggle then is our struggle today: a fight to find America. The essence of this battle is more relevant now than ever before.

The survey of events outlined in Paths to Power reveals the need to break the uncompromising pattern of imperialist policy in American government. In so doing, we do not need to articulate new theories or ideas to bring it about. Our history has already provided them to us. After all, the black Revolution, born out of a desire to obtain basic civil rights, evolved into a movement against the very thing that threatens our posterity today. In our struggle to build a republic amid the ruins of a crumbling empire, we can use a philosophy advanced by leaders of that movement to guide our work today. I will offer a general outline of this assertion in “The Next American Revolution.”

In making the case for Revolution, the Declaration of Independence states “let the facts be submitted to a candid world.” Let the words which follow achieve this most American of traditions.