A New Leader for a New Country: Presidents Make Precedents

The metamorphosis of eastern North America from British colony to independent sovereign nation lasted several decades. From the middle of the 18th century, especially after the French and Indian War ended in 1763, the colonies grew more and more restless under the oppressive British government. The King and Parliament levied a series of ever-higher taxes, confiscating thereby the hard-earned property of those living in the colonies. Further, the British regulated many facets of commerce — both business within the colonies and trade between the colonies and the rest of the world. The British also violated the rights of the colonists in egregious ways: the freedom of speech was threatened and violated.

Over the third quarter of the century, tensions grew, outrage among the colonies grew, and British control and oppression grew, until April 1775, when the war started. The fighting ended in late 1782; a peace treaty was signed in 1783. The colonies were now the United States of America.

Moving away from British persecution was only one half of the process. Moving toward the creation of the new nation’s own government was the other half.

There are many examples of revolutions which succeeded in throwing off cruel governments, only to fail to have prepared a new government to step in and take over. This is why the French Revolution failed. This is why so many postcolonial nations have gained their independence and autonomy, and then become “failed states” or remain locked in a third-world condition.

Throughout the 1700s, the Americans had not only developed vindications for their desire to be independent and sovereign, but rather they had also explored the general principles and possible specific programs for a new government. Some of these concepts had been tested in the settings of the legislatures within the individual colonies. The heritage of the British Parliament also provided a legacy from which both general principles and specific practices could be drawn, possibly modified, and sometimes rejected.

The thinkers who prepared the way for the revolution of 1776, and who shepherded it for several decades afterward, had deep and broad educations. Some of them had traveled widely; others had experience from business, military, political, or agricultural endeavors. Among the many names which belong to this list are Thomas Paine, Samuel Adams, James Otis, and Patrick Henry. Thomas Jefferson was able to read Greek at an advanced level by his early teenage years. Benjamin Franklin explored nearly every field of human endeavor, making groundbreaking discoveries in physics, and developing a music instrument for which Mozart, Josef Haydn, and Beethoven, among others, composed works. Among the authors of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, a working knowledge of Latin, Greek, French, Italian, German, and other languages was commonplace.

In June 1776, a committee began to write a document which would eventually become the Articles of Confederation. This paper would be a forerunner to the United States Constitution. All thirteen states ratified the finalized text of the Articles of Confederation by February 1781.

By September 1786, it was clear that the Articles of Confederation needed some adjustments. In the course of meetings to determine which changes were needed, starting in May 1787, the revisions were so significant that the document which emerged from these meetings in September 1787 was essentially an entirely new document, the U.S. Constitution.

The final product of the Constitutional Convention was designed to improve on the Articles of Confederation. It included insights from contemporary debates about government: discussions from the writings of John Locke, Montesquieu, and others. The last few centuries of the British experience shaped the document: the Magna Carta of 1215, the English Civil War, the tenure of Cromwell, the Stuart Restoration in 1660, and the British Bills of Rights of 1689. Given that the delegates at the convention had an extensive knowledge of history, the antecedents of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as the political thoughts of medieval Scholasticism, are visible in the Constitution.

The Constitution displays a certain universality and timelessness, inasmuch as it draws upon the features of human nature. All people — regardless of the place or era in which they live, regardless of their language, culture, or religion — share certain basic characteristics because they are human beings. They all desire, e.g., peace, freedom, justice, and prosperity. The rare exceptions — the warmonger or the criminal — even have such properties, although hidden behind a mental or moral disease.

The document features various procedural complexities designed to slow the functioning of the government, and thereby avert any scenario in which the government would infringe upon the rights of the individual. The Constitution is a set of rules which the government must obey. The Constitution protects the people from the government.

The majority of the delegates at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787 was opposed to slavery and sought its abolition. To create an instability which would eventually demand that attention be paid to the cause of abolition, the famous — or notorious — “three-fifths clause” was inserted into the text. They designed this text to destabilize the institution of slavery. This wording was not, as some suppose, devised to solidify slavery, but rather to undermine it.

Yet having an ethical and principled constitution was only the first step. Not only a structure of offices constitutes a system of government, but rather also the individuals who populate those offices.

The launch of the new federal administration would find its success not only in the equilibrium and justice established by the Constitution, but rather also in the character and quality of the human beings who would fill the various roles in the new structure.

It was in this respect that George Washington’s role became crucial, as historian Ron Chernow writes:

The battle royal over the Constitution exposed such glaring rifts in the country that America needed a first president of unimpeachable integrity who would embody the rich promise of the new republic. It had to be somebody of godlike stature who would seem to levitate above partisan politics, a symbol of national unity as well as a functioning chief executive. Everybody knew that George Washington alone could manage the paradoxical feat of being a politician above politics. Many people had agreed reluctantly to the new Constitution only because they assumed that Washington would lead the first government.

The procedural mechanisms of the legislature, of the executive, and of the judiciary are the skeleton of the system, but the humans in the offices are its flesh and blood. The styles of communication, the abilities to see which compromises are reasonable, and other interpersonal intangibles also partly determine whether an individual is successful in office.

George Washington possessed an ability to see talent and potential, even when it came in unlikely personalities, or was disguised behind immaturity. He also stuck unswervingly to his principles, ready to compromise on negotiables, but never conceding matters of integrity.

It was in this way that the improbably good working relationship between Washington and Alexander Hamilton arose, as Ron Chernow reports:

Perhaps the main reason that Washington and Hamilton functioned so well together was that both men longed to see the thirteen states welded into a single, respected American nation. At the close of the war, Washington had circulated a letter to the thirteen governors, outlining four things America would need to attain greatness: consolidation of the states under a strong federal government, timely payment of its debts, creation of an army and a navy, and harmony among its people. Hamilton would have written the identical list. The young treasury secretary gained incomparable power under Washington because the president approved of the agenda that he promoted with such tireless brilliance. Jefferson had it wrong when he charged that Hamilton manipulated Washington. On fundamental political matters, Washington was simply more attuned to Hamilton than he was to Jefferson. For that reason, Washington willingly served as the political shield that Alexander Hamilton needed as he became America’s most influential and controversial man.

Hamilton had both training and experience in the law. As part of the Constitutional Convention, he understood the document from the inside; he understood the competing viewpoints which had been mixed and welded into the text. He’d been one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, a series of essays designed to explain the new Constitution to the people, and to persuade them to adopt it.

Had Alexander Hamilton lived two centuries later than he did, he may well have used phrases like “systems theory in political science” — or had such phrases applied to him. With no precedents to follow, he, along with Washington and the other members of the new government, had to implement the mechanisms of the Constitution for the first time. This first generation of elected and appointed officials had to grasp both theory and practice: they needed to be both thinkers and doers.

The dynamics among the first cabinet members were both personal and political. The concept of “cabinet” was not yet clearly defined. Washington met with Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury, Jefferson as Secretary of State, and Henry Knox as Secretary of War. The Attorney General, Edmund Randoph, was only marginally associated with the cabinet, while the Vice President, John Adams, was largely kept out of it.

Hamilton was energetic, offering opinions on nearly every aspect of government. Ron Chernow describes Washington as “above the partisan fray” and “detached.” In this context, “partisan” does not refer to formally organized political parties, but informal alliances among various leaders: political parties had yet to be formally created. Washington “was gifted with superb judgment” and was “never a pliant tool in Hamilton’s hands.” Washington “often overrode his treasury secretary.”

In contrast to Hamilton, Washington “had learned to govern his emotions” and “was conciliatory, with an innate sense of decorum.” Although Washington worked well with Hamilton, he “could weigh all sides of an issue and coolly appraise the political repercussions.”

Washington and Hamilton counterbalanced and complemented each other. Hamilton was impulsive and sometimes deliberately provocative. Hamilton’s “excesses” and “rash decisions” ultimately cost him his life.

The Purposes of the Soviet Espionage Network inside the United States: More than Stealing Secrets

Ordinarily, when people think of spies, they picture spies as stealing secrets. That’s what spies do.

Yet spies do more than gather intelligence. They often plant falsehoods into the systems of the government against which they are working. They hope that the officials in that government will act on the basis of these fabrications.

Spies also work to insinuate themselves into circles of power, whether by gaining posts in a government, or by becoming confidants and eventually influencers in political organizations. In these situations, spies can not only gain access to secrets and plant fabrications, but they can also influence decision-makers in the government and eventually become decision-makers in the government: in the very government which they are attempting to destroy.

Finally, spies sometimes commit acts of violence: sabotage and assassination.

From the earliest days of Soviet Socialism, starting with the revolutions of 1917, Soviet operatives inside the United States functioned in all the ways discussed above. Concrete examples include Alger Hiss, who had a stellar government career. He served as a clerk for a Supreme Court justice, and went on to work in the Justice Department. He then was an assistant to a Senate committee. In 1936, Hiss began working at the State Department. He held an impressive and ever higher series of government posts until he retired from government work in late 1946. In the latter years of his career, Alger Hiss met frequently in face-to-face meetings with President Roosevelt, and became a trusted advisor to the president. Not only did Hiss meet frequently with Roosevelt in the White House, but he traveled with him to the Yalta conference in February 1945. In Yalta, a city on the Crimean Peninsula, Roosevelt met with Stalin and Winston Churchill to make decisions about the postwar reorganization of Europe. Hiss exerted significant influence over Roosevelt at the conference; indeed, Roosevelt sometimes merely did whatever Hiss told him to do.

Alger Hiss was also a paid spy working for the NKVD. The NKVD was a predecessor of the KGB. Alger Hiss was a Soviet agent.

Another specific example is Harry Dexter White. He worked in the Treasury Department from 1934 to 1946. He had decisive influence in the shaping of U.S. policies. He was a paid agent, working for the Soviet Socialists.

One tactic used by espionage agents is to find a naive and sympathetic individual who will be easily influenced. This individual will not be aware that he is being manipulated by sinister forces, yet will act in ways which support those forces. Soviet spies like Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White did exactly this with Henry Morgenthau, Jr.

Morgenthau was the United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1934 to 1945 during the Roosevelt administration. Morgenthau formulated economic policy, both for the years of WW2 and projected for the postwar global economy. In this context, he is often cited as the author of the “Morgenthau Plan,” a policy proposal which would have devastated what little remained of the German economy and infrastructure at war’s end.

Not only would this policy have been an attempt to consign the German people, already suffering after a dozen years of Nazi oppression, permanently to a third-world status, but it would have also removed an important line of defense: in order to shield western Europe from a Soviet attack, West Germany needed to have a solid infrastructure and industrial base to support the thousands of Allied troops stationed there.

The plan called for Germany to be stripped of its industrial base and physical infrastructure, leaving the land “agricultural and pastoral.” Morgenthau’s personal motive may have been a sense of justice: Morgenthau felt that Germany needed to be punished for war crimes, and that Germany should not be given the opportunity to rebuild itself. Historians use the phrase “harsh peace” to describe Morgenthau’s approach. Morgenthau may have also thought that Germany should be kept weak, lest it start another war.

Whatever Morgenthau’s emotional motives may have been, the plan itself was shaped decisively by Harry Dexter White. As a Soviet operative, White saw that a weakened Germany would give the Soviet Socialists a better chance in any potential future invasion of western Europe. Harry Dexter White used Henry Morgenthau’s emotions to get Morgenthau to promote the plan.

Henry Morgenthau provided the unfocused emotion and bitter passion needed to sell the plan as justice. Harry Dexter White created the details of the plan, calculated to serve Stalin’s interests, leave western Europe vulnerable, and facilitate the enslavement of millions when the Soviet attack happened.

The Morgenthau Plan should have been titled the Harry Dexter White Plan.

At the same time, Alger Hiss was using his influence to persuade President Roosevelt that America could trust Stalin. Under Hiss’s influence, Roosevelt accepted Stalin’s promise, given with no guarantees, that the Soviet Socialists would allow free and fair elections in the countries of eastern Europe — the countries already, or soon to be, occupied by the Soviet army. Millions of people in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, and elsewhere would be subjugated to the Soviet Socialist dictatorship because Alger Hiss persuaded President Roosevelt to grant Stalin’s wish.

Historians know with confidence that not only Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White, but also dozens of other high-ranking officials inside the U.S. government, were Soviet agents. Although much of this was known, and some of it suspected, prior to 1995, it was in that year that the National Security Agency (NSA) declassified some documents from its Venona Project. These documents, dating from 1943 to 1980, were intercepted communications between individuals in the Soviet espionage network inside the United States. The NSA had to decrypt these messages, as they were written in code. These messages identified those officials inside the U.S. government who were working for the Soviet Socialists.

In 1952, Whittaker Chambers wrote about Soviet intelligence activity. He himself had been a Soviet agent. He knew firsthand the workings of the Soviet espionage network. But in 1952, the Venona papers had not yet been published, and so he lacked documentation for some of what he wrote. He would be vindicated 43 years later, when the Venona decryptions were declassified. In one of his books, Whittaker Chambers wrote:

In a situation with few parallels in history, the agents of an enemy power were in a position to do much more purloin documents. They were in a position to influence the nation’s foreign policy in the interest of the nation’s chief enemy, and not only on exceptional occasions, like Yalta (where Hiss’s role, while presumably important, is still ill-defined) or through the Morgenthau plan for the destruction of Germany (which is generally credited to White) but in what must have been the staggering sum of day to day decisions. That power to influence policy has always been the ultimate purpose of the Communist Party’s infiltration. It was much more dangerous, and, as events have proved, much more difficult to detect, than espionage, which beside it is trivial, though the two go hand in hand.

Chambers not only identifies Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White, but points to the multiple tasks of the Soviet espionage network, i.e., that the agents did more than steal secrets.

Stan Evans and Herbert Romerstein highlight the accuracy of the statements made by Chambers. This precision is even more remarkable, given that Chambers wrote before the declassification of the Venona decryptions.

Chambers was correct about the roles of Hiss and White, though now accessible records that prove the point weren’t open to inspection when he made this comment.

Evans and Romerstein also give credit to Chambers for pointing out that the Soviet espionage network did more than steal secrets: “As to the relative importance of policy influence compared to spying, Chambers” indicated that Soviet agents planted disinformation and influenced policy decisions to a nearly unimaginable extent. The president of the United States was sitting in the Oval Office, having friendly one-on-one policy discussions with a man who reported to the Kremlin.

Because Chambers had himself been a Soviet agent, his account of at least a segment of the spy network was authentic and detailed. Evans and Romerstein show that Chambers gave one of the most significant descriptions of the Soviet intelligence apparatus: “That sums up the matter about as well as it can be stated.”

Ultimately, the truth became manifest. Alger Hiss was sent to prison. Harry Dexter White’s Morgenthau Plan was rejected in favor of rebuilding Germany. The purposes of peace, justice, and freedom were served. That is good news.

Sadly, however, Hiss and White — and dozens of other Soviet spies operating inside the United States at the time — did substantial damage: they emboldened Stalin and his successors. They are at least partly responsible for the deaths in the Hungarian Uprising, the armed suppression of the Prague Spring, the Korean War, the Vietnam war, and other incidents around the globe.

The U.S. Constitution: System and Procedure Build Justice

Politicians refer to the Constitution often, usually claiming that it supports whatever viewpoint they have. But what is the Constitution? And equally importantly, what is the Constitution not?

The Constitution is not a set of rules and laws. The Constitution is a set of instructions about how to make rules and laws. For example, the Constitution doesn’t care whether a community makes recreational marijuana legal or not. It doesn’t care whether the speed limit on the roads is 50 MPH or 80 MPH.

But the Constitution cares about how that decision gets made.

For example, the Constitution delegates the power to each state’s legislature to decide whether or not to legalize recreational marijuna. The point is not whether it’s legal or illegal: the point is who makes that decision. It would be a violation of the Constitutional process if the U.S. Congress made that decision.

There are some decisions which should be made by the state legislatures, and other decisions which should be made by the Congress. The important question isn’t which decisions get made, but rather, who should make them.

In the same way, there are some responsibilities to be carried out by the president and his executive branch, and other responsibilities which belong to the Supreme Court and its judicial branch.

In the long run, it doesn’t matter which decision gets made — whether marijuana is legal or not — but it matters who made that decision, and which process was used to make that decision.

The Constitution is a neutral document in this way. The Constitution can be, and should be, used by both sides — the people who are “for” and the people who are “against” any particular idea.

Without a Constitution, and without people acting according to the Constitutional process, chaos results, and after the chaos, some individual or group can seize power, and then the people’s freedom disappears. True freedom and true justice exist only where a neutral procedure is followed.

Because the Constitution is neutral, it is also timeless. Changes in society, technology, culture, or economics don’t affect the Constitution, and the process can apply equally to today or to a hundred years into the future. Constitutional procedures work for Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, or Hindus. Constitutional processes work for old and young, rich and poor, men and women. They work for any ethnicity, race, or culture.

The ideas in the Constitution last because they are built on human nature. Every human being has certain features in common with every other human being — anywhere, anytime. Concerning the universal principles of human beings, and how they are factored in to the Constitution, Ben Shapiro writes:

The founders constructed the Constitution on the basis of three main realizations about human beings. First, they realized that human beings are imperfect, selfish, driven by self-interest. They will go to war with each other to assure the victory of that self-interest. The founders agreed with the central theory of Thomas Hobbes, that without government, man reverted to constant warfare: “No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”

Given that human beings are imperfect, how can they build a peaceful society? How can they live and work together in justice, peace, prosperity, and freedom?

Back in the late 1600s, Thomas Hobbes wrote that only with a powerful absolute government — a dictatorship — could human society function decently. He felt that if people had freedom, they’d use it to attack each other. Today, there are still people like Hobbes: they believe that a powerful government should control the lives of people and make decisions for them.

But the people who wrote the U.S. Constitution didn’t agree with Hobbes. They thought that humans can have both a decent society and freedom at the same time. They got some of those ideas from the books written by John Locke, who lived a few years after Hobbes, but before the foundation of the United States.

Ben Shapiro explains how Locke articulated the idea of “limited government” — the idea that the government’s power shouldn’t be infinite, but rather that by limited the government’s power, the people protect their own freedom:

But they disagreed with Hobbes that the only way to solve this conundrum was a great and powerful ruler. They believed that such rulers were similarly capable of brutality in their own self-interest. They adopted this philosophy from John Locke, who wrote, “The end of government is the good of mankind; and which is best for mankind, that the people should be always exposed to the boundless will of tyranny, or that the rulers should be sometimes liable to be opposed, when they grow exorbitant in the use of their power, and employ it for the destruction, and not the preservation of the properties of their people?” In other words, if rulers invaded the rights of others, they ought to be curbed.

If the government has more power, then the people have less freedom; if the government has less power, then the people have more freedom.

How, then, can people structure a government to ensure that it doesn’t become too powerful?

The Constitutional system with its separation of powers is designed to make sure that no one part of the government gets too much control. If power divided between the three branches — legislative, judicial, executive — then each branch will have roughly one-third of the power, which is less than half, and therefore can be curbed by the other two branches.

The power is further divided between federal, state, and local governments. When the power is chopped up into small pieces, and different parts of government each have a piece, it prevents any one part of government from having too much power. Freedom is achieved and preserved when the government is relatively weak and limited: a strong and expansive government is the type of government which can take people’s liberties and properties.

Ben Shapiro explains how the Constitution carefully divides and balances power between different parts of the government:

So, how could society survive without an all-powerful ruler checking men? By a series of mutual checks and balances. As James Madison famously stated in Federalist #51: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

It might seem odd to say that people want a weak and limited government. Wouldn’t everyone hope for a strong and expansive government? But it’s better to have a strong nation with a weak government than to have a weak nation with a strong government. Either the government will have control, or people will have control. In order to be free, the people must have a limited government. The greatest danger to liberty is the government. This is ironic, because the purpose of the government is to protect the people’s freedom, but it is also true that when people lose their liberty, it’s because the government took it.

The best thing that can happen is gridlock. The word ‘gridlock’ might seem like something undesirable, but when the government is all bogged down in its own procedures, and when the government is doing little or nothing, that is when the people have the most freedom. When there’s a problem in society, or a problem, rather than having the government “do something,” it’s best if the government does nothing, so that the people can figure out how to fix it. The people will do a better job than the government.

The Constitution is filled with various mechanisms designed to slow down the government’s processes, a Ben Shapiro explains:

Checks and balances were designed to prevent government from overreaching its boundaries; only widespread agreement could overrule such checks and balances. The judiciary was therefore designed not to lord over the executive and legislative branches, but to interpret the law “under the Constitution;” it was checked by its requirement of funding from Congress and execution from the executive branch. The legislative branch was designed to pass laws in concurrence with the Constitution; the president was given the power to veto laws. Congress itself was checked by distribution of power between the House, chosen by population, and the Senate, chosen by state. The executive branch was checked by the legislature; the executive couldn’t create laws or self-fund, and the legislature could always impeach an incipient tyrant. The federal government as a whole was checked by state governments, all of which had their own checks and balances.

Although people often speak idealistically about the Constitution, it is, for the most part, not an idealistic document. The preamble, to be sure, does mention some ideals: justice, tranquility, the “blessings of liberty,” etc.

But the majority of the Constitution is a procedural document. Is the mechanics of running a government. The grand ideals are more found in the Declaration of Independence. The two documents complement each other. The Bill of Rights, a third essential document, is a part of the Constitution, an extension of the Constitution. “The structural Constitution,” as Ben Shapiro writes, “is the essence of American government.”

The design principles behind the Constitution factored in two realities: first, that the concrete details of societies change, and second, that human nature never changes. A system of government built on an understanding of human nature is designed to work in different situations. The Constitution applies, like the laws of algebra, in all contexts:

And it has nothing to do with technological progress. It relies on the same vision of human nature held by the founders, and the same vision of human rights: that because you are a human being, you have inviolable rights that cannot be removed from you by majority vote.

One universal aspect of human nature is that people desire freedom. Another aspect of human nature is that, given large amounts of power, people will sometimes take freedom away from others. The Constitution was formulated around these two factors. It is a system designed to maximize liberty and to protect liberty.

The Tax Withholding System: People Pay More Than They Know

Although there were small experiments with income tax in the United States going as far back as the 1860s, it was not until 1913 that the income tax system as it is known today appeared. For the first twenty-five years or so, the income tax rates were low, and in some years, people of the working class did not need to pay any income tax at all.

But three factors caused the government to need more money: first, the massive debt caused by New Deal spending programs; second, future obligations created by entitlement programs; third, the Second World War. Needing more money, the government raised income tax rates significantly.

The new rates were publicized, yet people didn’t understand that, on March 15 of each year, they would be forced to send thousands of dollars to the government. There was a big problem in the making. What would the government do when the majority of its citizens didn’t pay their taxes — or were unable to pay their taxes.

Historian Amity Shlaes recounts the looming problem facing government bureaucrats:

As March 15, 1943 neared, though, it became clear that many citizens still were not filing returns. Henry Morgenthau, the Treasury secretary, confronted colleagues about the nightmarish prospect of mass tax evasion: “Suppose we have to go out and try to arrest five million people?”

Clearly, a new system was needed. It wouldn’t work simply to present each individual America, once a year, with a bill for thousands of dollars.

Enter Ruml, man of ideas. At Macy’s, he had observed that customers didn’t like big bills. They preferred making payments bit by bit, in the installment plan, even if they had to pay for the pleasure with interest. So Ruml devised a plan, which he unfolded to his colleagues at the Federal Reserve and to anyone in Washington who would listen. The government would get business to do its work, collecting taxes for it. Employers would retain a percentage of taxes from workers every week — say, 20 percent — and forward it directly to Washington’s war chest. This would hide the size of the new taxes from the worker. No longer would the worker ever have to look his tax bill square in the eye. Workers need never even see the money they were forgoing. Withholding as we know it today was born.

The new tax system had several advantages. First, the government would get money in a steady stream all year long instead of one big amount once a year. Second, the government could collect interest on some of that money before it was spent. Third, the government could collect excess money from each individual, and then give an annual refund — meaning that the government had gotten an interest-free loan from each citizen. Fourth, the ordinary taxpayer would never really understand how much money the government was taking.

Workers received their pay, but before they got it, the government had already taken a cut. The government could steal their money without the workers feeling the pain. There was also no consent requested from, or given by, the worker. The money simply disappeared into the government.

This was a revolution in politics and economics, both of which depend more on perception than reality, more on psychology than mathematics. Amity Shlaes explains:

This was more than change, it was transformation. Government would put its hand into the taxpayer’s pocket and grab its share of tax — without asking.

The transfer of the concept from a department store to the government made sense: both institutions could make life more palatable for the individual by offering a “pay as you go” program.

The differences, however, were significant: the department store still required a deliberate volitional act of payment from the consumer monthly. The government required neither consent nor willingness, nor even awareness, on the part of the worker.

Ruml hadn’t invented withholding. His genius was to make its introduction palatable by adding a powerful sweetener: the federal government would offer a tax amnesty for the previous year, allowing confused and indebted citizens to start on new footing. It was the most ambitious bait-and-switch plan in America’s history.

The advantage of the withholding tax was that it made the process more comfortable for the taxpayer. But comfort is not freedom. By analogy, one might add sugar to poison to make it easier to consume, but it remains poisonous. The withholding tax was easier to endure, but in the end, the government still confiscated a worker’s money.

Taxpayers were faced with painful choices. In the absence of a withholding plan, some taxpayers took on debt in order to pay the massive annual tax bill. Withholding would avoid this debt. It also helped the war effort, and in 1943, as Amity Shlaes writes, that was loyal thing to do:

Ruml advertised his project as a humane effort to smooth life in the disruption of the war. He noted it was a way to help taxpayers out of the habit of carrying income tax debt, debt that he characterized as “a pernicious fungus permeating the structure of things.” The move was also patriotic.

The mechanism for orchestrating a withholding tax at all would have been technically daunting. To orchestrate it in a short period of time would have been impossible. But something made it possible: the government had already put in place a similar system to collect taxpayer’s money for the Social Security system.

Implementing the withholding program was very possible, even in a short period of time, because of the organizational infrastructure of the Social Security program. The IRS could simply piggyback on Social Security collections.

Ruml had several reasons for wagering that his project would work. One was that Americans, smarting from the Japanese assault, were now willing to sacrifice more than any other point in memory. The second was that the federal government would be able to administer withholding - six successful years of Social Security showed that the government, for the first time ever, was able to handle such a mass program of revenue collection. The third was packaging. He called his program not “collection at the source” or “withholding,” two technical terms for what he was doing. Instead he chose a zippier name: “pay as you go.”

In addition to a more palatable name, the new withholding system had advocates and fans among the economic experts of the day. John Maynard Keynes saw taxes, not only as a method for collecting needed revenue for the government, but as a method for regulating the macroeconomy. Keynes advised that, in some circumstances, governments should collect taxes even if they don’t need the money.

The withholding system allowed the government to easily and quickly change or increase the amount of taxes it was collecting, and so respond in Keynesian fashion to changes in the economic environment.

Ruml’s plan went from paying the government’s bills to managing the entire economy by increasing, suddenly and at will, the amount of money being taken from each worker’s paycheck.

The policy thinkers of the day embraced the Ruml arrangement. This was an era in which John Maynard Keynes dominated the world of economics. The Keynesians placed enormous faith in government. The one thing they liked about the war was that it demonstrated to the world all the miracles that Big Government could work. The Ruml plan would give them the wherewithal to have their projects even, they sensed, after the war ended. Keynesianism also said high taxes were crucial to controlling inflation. The Keynesians saw withholding as the right tool for getting those necessary high taxes.

After a few years, some of the experts began to question the wisdom of the withholding plan. One of them, Milton Friedman, later regretted promoting the withholding program, and contended that it should be dismantled, as Amity Shlaes reports:

Among withholding’s backers was the man who was later to become the world’s leading free-market economist, Milton Friedman. Decades after the war, Friedman called for the abolition of the withholding system. In his memoirs he wrote that “we concentrated single-mindedly on promoting the war effort. We gave next to no consideration to any longer-run consequences. It never occurred to me at the time that I was helping to develop machinery that would make possible a government that I would come to criticize severely as too large, too intrusive, too destructive of freedom. Yet, that was precisely what I was doing.” With an almost audible sigh, Friedman added: “There is an important lesson here. It is far easier to introduce a government program than to get rid of it.”

Milton Friedman said, in an interview:

I played a significant role, no question about it, in introducing withholding. I think it's a great mistake for peacetime, but in 1941–43, all of us were concentrating on the war. I have no apologies for it, but I really wish we hadn't found it necessary and I wish there were some way of abolishing withholding now.

One may note the general principle that wartime allows governments to take drastic actions which would not be countenanced in peacetime. People are willing to tolerate decisions made as necessary emergency actions during war. The sad lesson is that, with the advent of peace, the wartime controls often remain in the hands of the government.

Roosevelt’s Manic Start: The Chaos of the New Deal

The election of 1932 was an expression of desperate hope. Poverty and unemployment were at high levels and threatened to go even higher. The campaigns of Hoover and Roosevelt were based more on sentiment than specific policy proposals.

Roosevelt projected hope and optimism. One of the few specific actions he presented to voters was that he would support the repeal of the eighteenth amendment. Procedurally, however, the amendment was repealed by the individual states. Roosevelt’s presidential appeal on the topic was at best symbolic, but also utterly ineffectual and irrelevant.

The Democrats had lost the 1928 presidential election. They thought that one reason for the loss was that their candidate, Al Smith, was a Roman Catholic. So in 1932, they nominated Roosevelt, a Protestant. There was, in fact, some anti-Catholic sentiment in the nation at that time; it is difficult to determine, however, whether that sentiment played a major role in the out come of the 1928 election.

Voter sentiment was against Hoover, rightly or wrongly blaming him for the Great Depression.

In the end, Roosevelt won by a landslide.

The nation was eager to see what Roosevelt would do when he took office. Because the campaign had been vague on details, the public wasn’t sure which actions he would take. He’d promised to take measures dramatically and swiftly, as historian Amity Shlaes writes:

By the time of his inauguration back on March 4, everyone knew that Roosevelt would experiment with the economy. But no one knew to what extent. Now, in his first year in office, Roosevelt was showing them. He would present it all in what came to be known as the Hundred Days, that first frenzied period of legislative activity.

Roosevelt’s actions were quick and significant, but not necessarily consistent or planned. His approach was one of experimentation. He simply wanted to what would work.

Two major obstacles confronted FDR. First, the stakes were high to simply experiment: people’s livelihoods were at risk. Second, so many variables were changed and changing that discerning cause and effect was difficult or impossible.

Several of FDR’s goals were in tension with each other: He hoped to raise prices, to increase income for both companies and workers. Yet an increase in price could lead to weaker demand, reducing sales and subsequently income.

The president and the nation were, however, impatient and not willing to conduct careful analysis. They simply wanted to see action, and they hoped that action would bring improvement, even if the action was random, as Amity Shlaes explains:

The main tasks Roosevelt assigned himself were simple. The first was that there be a broad sweep of activity; Americans must know Washington was doing something. If there were contradictions between experiments and within them, well, that did not matter.

So it was, then, that measures were taken to reduce agricultural output, even as food shortages shaped the market. No serious thought was given to the decreased income to farmers.

Likewise, the New Deal would inevitably lead to increased taxation and increased national debt, sooner or later, and those phenomena would similarly slow the economy.

The New Deal, which ultimately failed to offer significant help — economic variables hadn’t improved by 1937 — was the result of sentiment rather than analysis: a chaotic flurry of activity.

Turning the Corner: How and When Slavery Began to End in the Americas

Students who know even a small amount about United States History, or American History, are aware that slavery existed. That’s not new knowledge.

What is less well known is that slavery existed in the Americas — North America, Central America, and South America — not for centuries, but for millennia: not for hundreds of years, but for thousands of years. Slavery was ubiquitous in the Americas.

This means that slavery cannot be treated merely as “a tangential part of the country’s history,” in the words of journalist Joe Heim, or as “an unfortunate blemish.” Slavery was an essential and pervasive feature of pre-Columbian cultures.

It is well documented that civilizations like the Inca, the Aztec, and the Maya were based on slavery. It is less well understood that slavery permeated the areas which are now Canada and the United States.

Given that slavery was everywhere established as a foundation of pre-Columbian societies in the Americas, the questions can be posed: How did slavery end? When did anti-slavery and abolitionist sentiments appear in the Americas?

The first permanent and enduring settlement in what would become the original thirteen states of the United States was, of course, Jamestown in Virginia, founded in 1607. Within a few years, the anti-slavery view had become so prevelant that slavery was outlawed in Rhode Island in 1652, creating for the first time in history a defined territory in the Americas in which slavery was illegal.

After hundreds and thousands of years, for the first time ever, there was a place in the Americas in which slavery was now longer perceived by society as the natural default circumstance. The inhumane institution of chattel slavery, kept in place for millennia, finally began to crumble after the arrival of Christopher Columbus and the ensuing settlements in North America.

Although the first radical break with slavery began in the early 1600s, it would last many years until the last traces of it were erased from the hemisphere. The eradication of slavery proceeded in steps. First, the majority of the population in the majority of the United States got rid of slavery. But a few states clung fiercely to slavery: the result was the bloodiest military conflict in U.S. history.

Because of the magnitude of the U.S. Civil War, and the fact that the war was caused largely by slavery, Joe Heim notes that people sometimes think of slavery “primarily as a factor in the Civil War.” But slavery is much more than the major cause of this war.

Slavery is a defining characteristic of pre-Columbian indigenous civilizations in the Americas. It was omnipresent in the Western Hemisphere until settlements of Europeans established themselves on the continents.

Sadly, some of the European were enchanted by the ways of the indigenous Native Americans and adopted the practice of slavery. Ultimately, slavery had to be purged not only out of the indigenous societies, but also out of some of the Anglo-European settlers.

The institution of slavery was so persistent that it took several centuries of European presence to finally eradicate chattel slavery.

African-American Leaders during the Great Depression: The Government Is Incapable, so Citizens Take Action

During the Great Depression, the ingenuity of ordinary citizens was fueled by their challenging circumstances. The overworked phrases of “thinking outside the box” and “necessity being the mother of invention” are correctly applied to this phenomenon.

Given the government's inability to make meaningful inroads against economic hardships — in 1937, things were as bad, or worse, than they were in 1932, despite five years of FDR’s “New Deal” — everyday people had to find ways to survive.

Beyond merely surviving, they found ways to uplift and encourage their communities: ways to develop and strengthen a sense of neighborliness. As examples, historian Amity Shlaes offers two African-American leaders who understood that when the government is unable to help, common citizens could step up and achieve great things:

Even the poorest communities, including the blacks, found their own response to joblessness and hunger. In Washington, Solomon Elder Lightfoot Michaux, a radio preacher, reached millions with his “Happy Am I” aphorisms. Michaux fed the hungry and maintained apartment houses for those evicted. Another figure in the black community to respond was Father Divine on Long Island. He began to expand the Sunday banquets served at his Sayville residence. What stood out about Father Divine’s meals was that they were the opposite of apples on the corner or soup kitchen food. Father Divine’s meals were luxurious. The coffee percolated; the roasts - chickens, ducks - were plentiful; the vegetables were splendid. “We charge nothing,” Father Divine ordained. “Anyone, man, woman, or child, regardless of race, color or creed can come here naked and we will clothe them, hungry and will will feed them.”

After the Great Depression and after WW2, Lightfoot Solomon Michaux went on to host his own television show starting in 1947. (In 1948 the show went from a regional broadcast to a national one.) It is significant that an African-American was hosting a TV program at this early date in the development of regular commercial broadcasting. Elder Michaux was born in Virginia in 1885.

Father Divine is often alleged to be the source of the phrase “you’ve got to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative,” which was later made into a popular song. Father Divine remains a mysterious figure: his exact birth date, birth place, and original legal name remain unclear.

The lesson from Elder Michaux and Father Divine is this: The people can’t wait for the government to fix problems, because it usually doesn’t or can’t. The people can work together, and work around the government, to make life better for their communities.

American Women Advance in the 19th Century: The 1800s as an Era of Growth for Women’s Rights in the United States

During the 1800s, the legal and social status of women in the United States improved significantly. Historians can document this development in a number of specific instances.

Women in the U.S. began voting in 1869. The first state to enact women’s suffrage was Wyoming, quickly followed by other states. By the end of the century, the majority of women in the country had a legislative guarantee for their right to vote.

Likewise, women began serving on juries during the 1800s. They served on an equal basis with men. In this development, too, Wyoming was the first state to promote the practice of having men and women serve equally on juries. After Wyoming began this custom in 1870, several other states followed suit.

By 1864, it was established legal precedent for women to testify in court: a woman’s statement was admitted into evidence on the same basis as a man’s statement. It is difficult to determine exactly when the practice began, but in 1864, Senator James Harlan, a lawyer himself, cited the practice in the Congressional Globe as well-established. (The Globe is the predecessor to the Congressional Record).

Women were elected to public office during the 1800s. Susanna Salter was elected mayor of Argonia, Kansas, in 1887. Julia Addington was elected as a county superintendent of schools in Iowa in 1869. Annie White Baxter was elected as a county clerk in Missouri in 1890. In 1896, Martha Hughes Cannon was elected a state senator in Utah.

Many more examples can be named: In 1894, Colorado elected three women to its legislature — Clara Cressingham, Carrie Holly, and Francis Klock.

Lauren Eisenhuth was elected in 1892 to be the state superintendent of public instruction in North Dakota. In 1898, Permeal French was elected to be the superintendent of public instruction in Idaho.

This trend — women becoming empowered in electoral politics and empowered in the legal justice system — began in the western states, perhaps because men and women often worked as a team, creating homesteads out of undeveloped land. This trend also took root where most voters identified with the Republican Party: the Republicans, having succeeded in their primary goal of abolishing slavery, turned to women’s rights as their next major task.

By contrast, the Democratic Party, having lost the U.S. Civil War, still felt the sting of defeat, and was not energized to pursue any major political initiatives.

The list of women elected to public office in the 1800s is much longer than can be presented here.

By 1888, the mayor and all the members of the city council in Oskaloosa, Kansas, were women. In 1887, all the members of the city council in Syracuse, Kansas, were women.

Women made great advances in higher education during the nineteenth century. In 1836, women began studying at Wesleyan College; in 1837 at Oberlin College. In 1849, Elizabeth Blackwell graduated from medical school at Geneva Medical College in New York, earning her M.D.

Rebecca Lee Crumpler earned her M.D. in Boston in 1864.

In 1858, Sarah Jane Woodson Early became a professor at Wilberforce College.

By 1899, it was common for women to be enrolled at universities and colleges across America.

Armed with professional degrees, women made their way into various careers. In 1869, Arabella Mansfield became the first woman admitted to the bar and granted a law license in the United States. By 1879, women who were lawyers were arguing cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 1870, Ada Kepley became the first woman to be a judge in the United States.

By the end of the century, women were regularly graduating from law school and practicing as attorneys across the United States.

The long list of other developments during the 1800s in the United States includes: Women were recognized as having full legal agency to negotiate, conclude, and sign contracts; to own and inherit property; and to keep or invest their earnings.

Although it was not until 1916 that Jeanette Rankin was elected as the first woman to serve in the United States Congress, her election was the result of the advancements made during the preceding century.

The nineteenth amendment, ratified in August 1920, guaranteed women’s right to vote, but it was by that point in time a merely symbolic act. It wasn’t needed because women had already been voting for half a century.

A Painful Struggle: America Works to Defeat Slavery

The development of the United States is one of continuously expanding freedom. From times before the nation’s beginning in 1776, the America made progress along various lines in the direction of increasing liberty.

The gravest and greatest of these steps was, of course, the elimination of slavery. The majority of Americans resisted slavery: the first slaves were imported into Brazil and other South American regions in 1510, but North America was able to hold out against slavery for more than another century.

Prior to the establishment of the United States as an independent and sovereign nation, the majority of the residents in the majority of the thirteen colonies opposed slavery. Led by Roger Wiliams, Rhode Island made slavery illegal in 1652. Samuel Sewall published abolitionist writings in Massachusetts as early as 1700.

In all thirteen colonies, energetic abolitionist movements were at work prior to 1776.

Once the nation was established as independent from Britain, is was clear that the “Founders wanted to abolish slavery,” as Ben Shapiro writes:

From its founding, the United States attempted to come to grips with slavery and phase it out. The state of Vermont was the first sovereign state to abolish slavery, in 1777.

Thomas Jefferson wrote that King George III “waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation hither.” Rebellion against England’s king was a step toward ending slavery.

Although slavery vanished from most of the original thirteen states, and from those later added to the union, it stubbornly resisted American efforts to eradicate it from some of the states, particularly those which had integrated it into agricultural economies of tobacco, cotton, and sugar cane.

Continuing the struggle against slavery, the U.S. Constitution was written in 1787, including the famous and controversial “three-fifths clause.” This phrase was introduced as an anti-slavery tactic: It both created a congnitive dissonance by its disconcerting logic, and denied power to a bloc of pro-slavery states. Ben Shapiro explains:

The Constitution of the United States is frequently seen as enshrining slavery, but the so-called three-fifths clause was an attempt to do the opposite. The whole question of popular apportionment rested on whether to count slaves as full people for purposes of representation. To do so would have put the slaveholding south at a significant advantage: they would have counted slaves in their population, not allowed them to vote, then used their increased representation in order to re-enshrine slavery. As James Madison noted, the delegates from South Carolina fought for blacks to be counted as whole people so as to include them “in the rule of representation, equally with the Whites.” The three-fifths compromise was designed to curb the South’s expansionist tendencies with regard to slavery by preventing them from stacking the electoral deck. The Constitution also allowed slave importation to continue until 1808 — but Congress moved in 1807 to end it there.

By 1807, then, the U.S. was ahead of schedule in its efforts to end slavery. A small but entrenched group of leaders continued to support slavery.

The final end of slavery was possible because the nation’s economy was based, not on slavery, but on free enterprise. Not only was the industrial part of the country not dependent on slavery, but rather it actively opposed slavery.

Yet abolitionism was not confined to any one part of the United States. Before and during the war, significant abolitionist movements existed in all states. The South was not a united monolithic pro-slavery bloc.

For at least these two reasons, then, a massive amount of energy was poured into the war to end slavery: because the larger part of the economy did not rely on slavery, and because the larger part of society was opposed to slavery:

The United States fought a great and massive Civil War to free the slaves, in which over 620,000 Americans died, nearly half the total number of Americans to die in all wars combined. The economy of the United States was not built on slavery — in fact, the South’s economic power was dismal compared to that of the north, which is why the north was able to overcome the south during the Civil War.

Between 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and 1865, when the Civil War ended, America achieved its goal of ending slavery.

In South America, Brazil kept slavery long after the United States had ended it. Slavery was not abolished Brazil until 1888. Likewise, Cuba maintained slavery until 1886.

The movement to abolish slavery in the United States was part of a larger trend to expand freedom for all people. As soon as the Civil War was over, and slavery was gone, this movement went on to obtain another great goal. The abolitionist movement gave birth to the suffrage movement, with the goal of women voting. The same political party, the part of Lincoln, energized both movements. By 1869 — not 1920 as sometimes reported — women in the United States began voting regularly.

Throughout American history, the nation has worked to increase liberty, expanding suffrage to larger and larger segments of society, creating more economic opportunities, and allowing more and varied forms of expression.

The common thread which connects the points of U.S. history from the 1600s to the present is the persistent drive to expand freedom.

Some People Are Citizens, Others Are Residents: What’s the Difference?

Usually people are citizens of the country in which they live, but not always. A person can live in one country, and yet be a citizen of a different country.

A person could be an American citizen, but never have been in the United States at any point in her or his entire life. Another person might live in the U.S. for 20, 30, or 40 years, and yet not be a citizen.

A citizen has rights, privileges, duties, and obligations. Each of those words has specific meaning: Rights belong to citizens, and citizens can legally claim their rights; rights cannot be legally denied to citizens. Privileges are given to citizens, but can be taken away legally. A duty is something that you should do, but which nobody will force you to do. An obligation is some that you’re required to do, and somebody will force you to do it.

This can be made clear with examples: Freedom of the press is a right; people can print whatever they want on a piece of paper. To drive 70 miles per hour is a privilege; the government could change the speed limit to 60 miles per hour and people would have no recourse. To vote is a duty; citizens should do it, but they are not forced to do it. To pay taxes is an obligation; if people try to avoid doing it, they will be forced to do it.

Non-citizen residents do not have as many rights and privileges as citizens. Victor Davis Hansen writes:

A resident of America should be easily distinguished from a citizen by the etymologies of the respective two nouns. “Resident” derives from the Latin residere, “to sit down or settle.” It denotes the concrete fact of living in a particular place. In contrast, “citizen” entails a quality, a privilege of enjoying particular rights predicated on responsibilities — and not necessarily on location at any given time.

If a citizen of the United States happens to be in Norway on the day of a Norwegian election, the U.S. citizen does not get to vote in Norway, even though he’s there in that country, because he’s not a citizen of Norway.

Likewise, if a citizen of Norway happens to be in the United States on the day of a U.S. election, the Norwegian does not get to vote in the U.S., even though he’s right there on election day, because he’s not a citizen of the U.S.

Citizenship is not about a person’s race or religion; it’s not about a person’s gender or age. It’s about a piece of paper; it’s about the government under which you are. There are approximately 195 countries in the world. Every human being is a citizen of one of them.

Are there exceptions? Yes. A small number of people have dual citizenship, or multiple citizenships. But the governments involved place pressure on them to select one citizenship to the exclusion of others, once they reach the age of adulthood, sometime between age 18 and age 25, depending on the country. There is also a very small number of people who have no citizenship; they are usually considered criminals. Victor Davis Hanson explains:

An American resident can be a citizen or subject of any foreign nation who just happens to be living within the boundaries of the United States. US citizens, however, are entitled to constitutional protections wherever they go — to the extent possible given the constraints of their hosts. Most specifically, citizenship ensures the right to a US passport and, with it, leave and return to America whenever one wishes.

Having a citizenship doesn’t determine who you are, what you believe, or which political opinions you have. Simply because a person is a citizen of Germany or Switzerland, or of Poland or Czechia, doesn’t mean that she or he will love or hate certain people, or vote a certain way. It merely means that they are registered with a certain government.

The American Identity: A Nation Built on the Idea of Freedom

In the first few decades of the twenty-first century, the word ‘identity’ has gained a new, larger, and different role in society and in politics. This trend started already at the end of the twentieth century. Therefore it might be, in the context of American History, well and fitting to ask about “the nation’s enduring identity” in the words of Ben Shapiro.

What is it that lies at the core of the identity of the United States? Part of the answer lies in the fact that it is founded on ideas. Most, or even all, previous nation-states were founded on the concept of a dynasty: that the right to rule was the property of a family — one particular family, the royal family — and that like other property, could be handed down through inheritance. The United States is different: It is a nation based on ideas.

In other words, there is a choice in history: either a nation-state is founded on the exclusive hereditary rights of a dynastic family to rule, or it is founded on concepts.

In the case of the United States, the ideas on which the nation is founded include: liberty, freedom, equality, and the rule of law.

Liberty and freedom are slightly different, but those minutiae can be left to philosophers instead of historians. The “rule of law” is worth understanding: This concept speaks about the uniform, neutral, and equal application of laws to any citizen in a nation. The speed limit on a local road, e.g., is the same, even if the driver happens to be a congressman or a senator, even if the driver happens to be wealthy or influential. Anyone caught driving faster than the speed limit is liable to get a ticket and liable to have to pay the fine.

The United States is founded on these ideas, but it has not always implemented them perfectly. American history is a series of steps toward ever-increasing levels of freedom; that path has not always been smooth or direct.

From its earliest beginnings, the United States worked to eliminate slavery. When, e.g., Samuel Sewall published an abolitionist book in 1700, he was already preceded by a 1652 law, passed by the Rhode Island legislature, which outlawed slavery there. The law, encouraged by Roger Williams, was unevenly enforced, but nonetheless manifests the will of the people of Rhode Island.

This same Roger Williams found his motives for opposing slavery to be united with his motives for nudging America away from British rule, revealing the American spirit to be, from its very beginnings, an abolitionist spirit. A majority of the residents of the thirteen colonies opposed slavery.

Despite a strong abolitionist sentiment, it took considerable time to finally abolish slavery. It was not until Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the end of the Civil War — i.e., until some point in time between 1863 and 1865 — that slavery in the United States was finally ended.

Which leaves us with a painful and perplexing question: Why, then, did slavery persist in other nations around the world? Why did slavery persist in Cuba until 1886 and in Brazil until 1888? In Madagascar until 1896 and in Egypt until 1904? In Thailand until 1905 and in China until 1909?

The answer, in part, lies in the foundation of the United States on the idea of freedom. Other nations were founded one one group — one family — claiming the right to exercise power over everyone else in the nation.

People in various nations around the world looked at the United States and hoped to copy the American pattern — they hoped to gain the same freedoms and rights for themselves in their various nations. As historian Ben Shapiro writes:

European colonists arrived in America in order to establish a country founded on principles of liberty and religious toleration. America is guilty of many sins in its past — but the principles enshrined in the Constitution are eternal and good. The Constitution’s central natural law principles laid forth the notions of individual liberty and rights to one’s own labor — and over time, those rights would be perfected in the United States, not through centralized government, but through good people struggling to bring about change through blood and sacrifice and persuasion.

In the United States, not only was slavery ended, but the right to own property and the right to vote was extended to citizens of all races; in the world today, there are other nations which allow only some people to vote, and not others. In the United States, a person of any race can be a citizen; in other nations, only people of certain races can be citizens.

In the U.S., women as well as men can vote; in other nations in the world today, women are deprived of full suffrage and not allowed to vote as men vote.

In the U.S., a citizen’s vote is counted as equal to the vote of any other citizen, regardless of wealth. In other nations today, only the wealthy are allowed to vote.

In the words of Ben Shapiro, there is a collection of ideas which constitute “the system upon which our freedoms and prosperity is based.” In addition to the ideas mentioned above, there are ideas like popular sovereignty — the idea that the legitimacy of the government is found in the consent of the governed; a government is valid only if those who are governed by it give their consent to be so governed.

Another foundational principle in the United States is the idea of majority rule. Because the U.S. allows citizens to vote equally, regardless of gender, race, religion, or wealth, it is the majority of ordinary people who can decide major questions of government.

Around the world, the U.S. has served as an example of a nation-state governed by freely-elected representatives. Political revolutionaries and political reformers in other countries have studied the U.S. carefully, and worked to replicate its success. “The truth is, America, while certainly not perfect, has long been a beacon of hope,” as Ben Shapiro notes. “America’s founding principles and documents have allowed it to become a model of freedom and democracy for the world.”

Even those nations which are harshly critical of the United States, even those which firmly oppose the United States, still copy the principles which were first articulated and put into action during the American Revolution of 1776.