Up in the sky, look! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!
From 1940 to 1958 millions of Americans tuned in weekly to The Adventures of Superman, a show about an amazing man with superpower. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, our political class and their echos in the media extolled the United States as “the world’s sole remaining superpower.” It has turned out that being a superpower isn’t all that much fun.
According to the show’s announcers, Superman used his superpower to fight for “Truth, Justice, and the American Way.” Members of our political class, on the other hand, have often used the United States superpower to promote their own narrow interests, leading to many thousands of unnecessary deaths worldwide as well as instability and decline at home and abroad. Examples abroad include starting or interfering in several foreign wars. Examples at home include massive bailouts of big-business interests.
Superman was always able to resolve any issue in 20-minutes or so, leaving plenty of time for advertising in his 30-minute time slot. Internationally and at home, the United States superpower has repeatedly interfered in issues where it had no legitimate business, squandered it’s people’s resources, made a mess of things, and eventually given up without achieving its initial objectives.
Perhaps it is time to stop trying to be a “superpower.”
Thinking of our nation as a “superpower” has led us to overreach again and again, to attempt the impossible and fail while neglecting the principles that made us strong. The laws of physics and economics still apply and always will. Our only real strengths as a nation come from the labor, creativity, and social-cohesion of the American people. To overcome the current impotence and decline of the United States, we must focus on rebuilding those strengths.
We can start building social cohesion by being scrupulously honest with one another. Routinely we find our elites have withheld important information from us. As Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Half a truth is often a great lie.” Other times we find them complicit in outright lies, as with Michael Brown, Benghazi, Russian collusion and others. It appears they are trying to divide us into groups that fight with each other. It is almost as if they think of us as enemies, or at best, subjects. Julius Caesar famously said, “Divide and conquer.” But when we look at ourselves honestly, we see that the interests of almost all Americans are very similar. With honest conversation we should be able to find acceptable compromises for most of our real differences. It appears the main divisions that weaken the American people come from false issues based on lies and half-truths.
The strength and creativity of American labor can be maximized by simply allowing people to work, produce, and be creative with minimal government interference. Due to the law of unintended consequences, collective measures to promote labor, productivity, and creativity most often have the opposite effect. If we collectively enforce honesty, integrity, and respect for individual human rights; most other issues can be resolved through our markets.
When we no longer think of ourselves as a “superpower,” we can also reevaluate our relationship with the rest of the world. Do we really need 750 foreign military bases to protect ourselves? What do the American people really gain from projecting power around the world? Do we really know what is best for people in distant countries most Americans cannot even find on a map? (And if we do happen to know what is best for them, do we have the will and competence to provide it?) Can our people think of better applications for their creativity and labor than funding foreign military adventures?
Let’s also reevaluate our treaties. NATO, the North-Atlantic Treaty Organization, is a military alliance formed in 1949 to protect Europe from the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had a stated goal of converting the entire world to what it called, “communism,” and had used force to implement its will on neighboring countries. Understandably, many in Europe and America interpreted that as a threat. The Soviet Union collapsed more than 30 years ago, removing NATO’s reason to exist. The United States should have respectfully pulled out of the treaty at that time. When NATO had a purpose, its members had incentive to set aside national differences in pursuit of a common goal. Without a purpose, NATO is hamstrung, unable to achieve consensus among its members. In war, if it were to come to that, the will to fight is at least as important as weapons and numbers of troops. NATO might even be stronger without the United States, as U. S. interests often diverge from those of the European members. It is not too late for us to pull out now.
The only legitimate purpose of any government is to serve and protect the people it governs. The United States federal government needs to concentrate on serving the American people with “Truth, Justice, and the American Way” and to stop trying to be a “superpower.”
Posted 2022/02/15