Pat says we went off the rails of pacific republican virtue
when we left the continent and sought conquests, not of new territory for
eventual incorporation as states, but to sustain global power.
Ralph Kecham points out in his introduction that a very
common worry among the anti-federalists who opposed the constitution in which
PB finds only the perfection of republican virtue and wisdom was that the new
national government to be created by it, by intention far stronger and more
unified than the government then current under the Articles of Confederation,
would lead directly to standing armies, high taxes, wars, and empire.
And it was, in fact, the intention of the nationalists,
deceptively re-baptized “federalists,” to make of America a strong, rich, and expansive nation
and a world power.
Pat simply blinds himself to that and to the entire history of America’s
westward sweep to the Pacific and the continuity of our subsequent “rise
to globalism” with that expansion.
The whole was a single movement that began almost
immediately after the Constitution was adopted.
The predictions of the anti-federalists were fully borne out
by history.
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