Paul Craig Roberts on America's revolution

 America’s First Revolution Is Happening Now

Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts,

19 January, 2021

Hear me out and you will understand the title.

There is a difference between a rebellion and a revolution.  A rebellion is what occurred in the thirteen colonies in the late 18th century.  A revolution is what occurred in Russia in 1917.

A rebellion occurred in the colonies, because the subjects of the king in the colonies were treated differently constitutionally and in law from subjects of the king in England. The colonists had no representation in Parliament and no voice in how they were ruled.

The rebellion resulted in political independence but not in a change in the belief system. The colonists held to belief in the rule of law to which government is held accountable and to Blackstonian legal principles.  The legal and political principles that the English had fought for from the Magna Carta to the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which established the people’s power to govern themselves through representatives in Parliament, were enshrined in the Constitution.  The United States is the Constitution. If the Constitution is set aside and not followed, the United States is a different entity.

For the United States to break from the Constitution is a revolutionary act in comparison to the 18th century rebellion demanding equal treatment for English colonists.

The essence of a revolution is a collapse in the system of beliefs that hold a country together.

A revolution is what occurred in Russia in February, 1917.  Most people think that the Czar was overthrown by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, but this is not the case.  The Czar was overthrown by the collapse in the belief system that defined Czarist Russia.  The collapse in the belief system resulted in the February Revolution.  The Czar’s military forced him to abdicate in March.  A Socialist Revolutionary, Alexander Kerensky became Prime Minister of a provisional government.

The Bolsheviks’ October Revolution was directed against this provisional government.  It was not a revolution, because the revolution had already occurred.  It was an unseating.  The Bolsheviks’ question to the provisional government was: “Who chose you?”  The obvious answer was that they had chosen themselves.

If asked the same question, the American Establishment’s answer is the same as the Russian provisional government’s answer.

The structure of belief that defined Czarist Russia was destroyed by the Russian liberals who used the Czar’s need of their support for World War I against Germany to agitate for a Constitutional Monarchy, as existed in England, where the monarch retained some power, but legislation was in the hands of a parliament.  Rather than the source of law, the monarch was accountable to law.

The Russian liberals placed a high value on their agenda.  In their pursuit of their agenda, they became increasingly aggressive in their condemnations of the Czar’s resistance.  Unaware or dismissive of the Czar’s promise to his father not to alter Russia by relinquishing power, the liberals’ denunciations became unsettling to the mass of the Russian people, who kept expecting retaliation from the Czar against those committing sedition against him.

But the Czar could not retaliate, because without the liberals and their organizations the war effort would be impaired.  The Czar did not realize the impact on the population of unanswered accusations.  Russians concluded that the accusations must be true as the Czar failed to act against his accusers.

I have given you a brief explanation. You can get the complete story if you can find a copy of Russia 1917, The February Revolution by George Katkov.

As a post-graduate at Oxford University, I got to know George Katkov and benefitted from many conversations with him.  Katklov was a don at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University.  It was St. Antony’s that arranged for me to give a Special University Lecture at Oxford on January 20, 1969, a special treat for a graduate student.  Even then truth had to struggle its way.  Now it has little chance.

This brings us to America’s First Revolution now unfolding.  How did it come about?  It came about because decades of liberal assaults in the name of one “progressive cause” or another destroyed the structure of beliefs that define the United States.  Today we can see with our own eyes, if we open them, that there is no longer any such thing as academic freedom, free speech, freedom of association, privacy, due process.  People are fired from their jobs and sentenced to economic peril for merely expressing their opinions or attending the wrong rally or using disapproved pronouns.  Those who insist on electoral integrity, the basis of democracy, are demonized as “enemies of democracy.”  Legislation is pending that will be used to define any dissent from controlled Establishment explanations as subversion.

You can add to the list.  But a long list is unnecessary to show that no important institution in America any longer believes in the liberties and protections guaranteed by the US Constitution or in democracy itself.  Not the universities, the bar associations, the media, the courts, the political parties or the Congress.

It is this destruction of belief that constitutes the First American Revolution. The consequences are yet to be fully felt.

America’s Demise Is Near At 

Hand

America R.I.P.

Paul Craig Roberts

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2021/01/18/america-r-i-p-2/

For years I have been cataloging America’s decline into collapse, not merely economic collapse from economic concentration and the offshoring of jobs and investment, but also the collapse of the belief system that created some unity among a diverse population.  Today not only is the economy done for, but so is the belief system that sustained social and political stability.

America no longer exists.  A geographical entity exists of diverse peoples and interests, but not a country, much less a nation.  The United States itself has degenerated into an empire.  It is no longer simply a country with an empire.  The 50 states are themselves the Establishment’s empire, and it can only be held together by force.

Earlier in my life free speech was used by liberals to legalize pornography, homosexual marriage, and abortion, all of which were opposed by the majority of the population.  This did not stop liberals from imposing their agendas on the people.  

Today free speech is impermissible, because it can be used to protest what half of the population sincerely believes was a stolen presidential election.  Even attorneys and legal firms that brought legitimate cases of electoral fraud for clients are being punished for doing the ordinary work of attorneys.  The same is happening to university professors and to average Americans who exercised their Constitutionally protected right of free speech and association and attended the Trump rally. See for example: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2021/01/18/americans-no-longer-live-in-a-free-society/ 

In America today, free speech can only be exercised in narrow and controlled channels.  It can be used to demonize President Trump and his supporters as “enemies of democracy.”  It can be used to demonize white people as “systemic racists” and “white supremacists,” and to demonize heterosexual white males as “misogynists.”  Its one other use is to demonize countries—Russia, China, and Iran—that stand in the way of Washington’s hegemony.  There are no other permissible uses of free speech today in the United States, an inappropriate name of the country as the country has been throughly disunited by Identity Politics and a presidential election widely perceived by voters to have been stolen.

I have provided for my readers a massive, but only partial, list of evidence of a stolen election.  See: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2021/01/15/dont-fall-for-the-establishments-tall-tales-there-was-no-violent-assault-on-the-capitol-and-there-is-abundant-evidence-of-electoral-fraud/ 

But a simple question suffices:  If the election was not stolen, why is it impermissible to  raise the question?  Explanations that are off limits to investigation and public discussion are unlikely to be true.  The reason they are off limits is because they cannot withstand examination. You don’t have to go back far in time to get a long list:  Assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK, Waco, Oklahoma City Bombing, 9/11, Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Iranian nukes, Assayd’s use of chemical weapons, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russiagate, 2020 electoral fraud, January 6 Trump Insurrection.  And, yes, I left out some, but the point stands without them.  A country in which explanations are controlled is a country in which people live in lies.

In America and Western civilization generally, the concept of objective truth has essentially been destroyed, especially in educational and communication institutions. Throughout the Western World the basis of truth has been shifted from evidence to emotion.  Emotion has become the important evidence.  Objective truth is dismissed as a construct that serves white males.  https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/12/23/on-truth/ 

In America today everything is aligned against the white heterosexual population.  The Democrat left, universities, and media are aligned with race and gender victims of alleged white racism and transphobia.  Kristen Clarke has been appointed to the Justice (sic) Department to ensure that employment and promotion policies are aligned with race and gender victims. https://www.rt.com/usa/512341-civil-rights-pick-racism/  

Immigration policy is aligned against white Americans. Powerless as a majority, white Americans have no future as a minority.  https://www.zerohedge.com/political/biden-immediately-send-congress-bill-would-offer-citizenship-11-million-illegals?utm_campaign=&utm_content=Zerohedge%3A+The+Durden+Dispatch&utm_medium=email&utm_source=zh_newsletter   Also: https://www.rt.com/usa/512765-migrant-caravan-biden-policy/ 

Even if white Americans could escape their insouciance and realize that their country is being taken away from them, they are powerless to do anything about it. With the new domestic terrorism bill on the way, even a protest against dispossession is criminalized as sedition.

There are many interesting aspects of the situation that we could explore.  But let’s take only one.  The Biden regime seems to be filling up with neoconservative zionists who are agents of Washington and Israel’s hegemony.  The pursuit of this hegemony involves conflict with Russia, China, and Iran.  

Washington will be entering these conflicts with a collapsed economy and a sharpely divided population.  Will the real backbone of the American armed forces—Trump deplorables—fight for an Establishment that hates its guts?  Will an economy drowning in debt and destroyed by corporate offshoring of investment and American middle class jobs and now by lockdowns that are destroying the remaining pieces of the middle class—small businesses—be able to sustain a conflict with nations more unified and free of external debt and unmanageable internal debt?  If so, it will be the first time in history.

How long will Trump deplorables remain docile when they realize that they are being exterminated by being cut off from equal rights, constitutional protection, employment and avenues of success?

As for the Establishment itself, when will its arrogance and confidence be shaken by the realization that it cannot control the anti-white, anti-American ideologues it has created and is itself facing the situation faced by Kerensky, the Brownshirts, and the Chinese Communist Party when Mao unleashed the cultural revolution?  Having empowered hatred and having let it out of the bottle, the Establishment itself will be destroyed by it. 

Who will the Establishment appeal to when the revolution turns on them?  What answer will the Establishment have when they are asked the question Bolsheviks put to Kerensky:  “Who chose you?”