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To understand America’s entry into World War I—and to evaluate whether it was wise—we must first understand the world Americans were being asked to enter. This article examines the European imperial system: its origins, its logic, and its catastrophic failure. Before Americans can judge whether intervention was necessary, they must grasp what intervention meant: joining a continent-spanning network of automatic commitments that could transform any local dispute into general w

1898 was the year America crossed the threshold from continental republic to overseas empire. In ten months, the United States acquired colonies spanning the Caribbean and Pacific, engaged in brutal counterinsurgency against Filipino independence fighters, and abandoned the founders’ foreign policy principles. This episode examines the manufactured justification for war (the Maine explosion, likely an internal accident), the Philippine-American War’s atrocities (reconcentrati

This contemporary application episode applies the historical template from Article 2—the Mexican-American War’s pattern of manufactured casus belli, executive manipulation, and marginalized critics—to current events in Venezuela, Iran, and the renewed discussion of American territorial expansion. We examine how the DOJ’s “Cartel de los Soles” claim dissolved when it had to be proven in court, how American objectives toward Iran have continuously shifted, and how current annex

Understanding 1898 is essential because the patterns established then have repeated throughout the subsequent century: the triggering incident of disputed origin, the media hysteria, the humanitarian justification for commercial and strategic interests, the executive manipulation of Congress, the marginalization of critics as unpatriotic, and the unforeseen consequences that produce the next intervention. From the Maine to the Gulf of Tonkin to weapons of mass destruction, th

This episode examines American continental expansion—from Jefferson’s peaceful Louisiana Purchase to Polk’s manufactured Mexican-American War to Cleveland’s principled refusal to annex Hawaii. We explore the diversity of Native American nations and the varying (but consistently dispossessive) American policies toward them. We trace how the Mexican-American War established a template for imperial conflict—executive manipulation, manufactured casus belli, congressional acquiesc

This contemporary application episode examines how the founders’ key insight—that foreign policy and domestic liberty are intimately connected—plays out in a current case study. We trace the chain from America’s ongoing undeclared war in Somalia (over 100 airstrikes in 2025 alone) to the refugee crisis it has fueled to the fraud scandal now dominating headlines in Minnesota. The founders warned that entanglements abroad would have consequences at home. This is what those cons

I more than suspect already, that he is deeply conscious of being in the wrong—that he feels the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to Heaven against him. —Abraham Lincoln on President Polk, 1848

This episode establishes the baseline of American foreign policy as the founders envisioned it. We examine the lessons of the Revolutionary War and the French Alliance, the classical republican tradition's warnings about standing armies, and the constitutional provisions designed to prevent military adventurism. We explore the foundational texts—Washington's Farewell Address, Jefferson's First Inaugural, and Madison's "Political Observations"—in depth and in the founders' own

On January 3, 2026, the United States launched military strikes against Venezuela and captured President Nicolás Maduro. This special episode—released alongside our series introduction—applies the founders’ framework to these events in real time. We examine the facts as currently known, compare the operation to historical precedents (Panama 1989, the Escobar manhunt), analyze the constitutional questions raised by unilateral executive military action, and ask what precedent h

“Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” —Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, 1801

How did a republic founded on principles of non-intervention become an empire with military bases in eighty countries? How did a nation that once warned against “entangling alliances” come to maintain alliance commitments that span the globe? And here is the question that matters most: How have these choices abroad shaped liberty at home?

When the Founders wrote the Constitution, they assumed emergencies would be temporary. War, invasion, rebellion — these were storms to be weathered, not climates to be lived in. They left no explicit clause for “suspending” liberty because they believed free men would never consent to live without it.

This episode examines what is being built—the infrastructure of digital control that will define the next generation’s relationship with government and commerce, tracing the convergence of financial surveillance, digital identity, and social scoring into a unified system.

COVID-19 would ultimately kill more than one million Americans. The elderly. The immunocompromised. There is no questioning the reality of the toll this virus inflicted on people with pain, suffering, and grief. Rather, this episode asks a different question—not whether the virus was dangerous, but whether the response was proportionate. Not whether government should have acted, but whether the actions taken were consistent with constitutional governance. Not whether emergenc

What happens when welfare and security fuse—when the databases designed to track benefits become interoperable with those designed to track threats. When the citizen who was once a recipient becomes a credential. When the bureaucracy that once served becomes the bureaucracy that manages.

A secret cabal flaunted in its own history pages of its website. A hybrid entity private in form, public in function. The evolution of the power to create money—to determine the value of every dollar in every pocket— from the halls of congress (elected representatives of the people) to the hands of unelected experts. A fiat money system, where there is no constraint, where the quantity of money is limited only by the decisions of those who control its creation. A system t

After September 11, the national security apparatus discovered that Silicon Valley had already built something it could never have constructed on its own: a commercial surveillance infrastructure of unprecedented scope. The partnership that emerged—formalized through Section 702, PRISM, and informal coordination channels—erased the boundary between corporate database and government intelligence.

The New Leviathan: From 9/11 to COVID and the Return of Emergency Power - Ep. 01 What happens when emergency becomes permanent? When the logic of exception becomes the logic of governance? When the state designed to manage poverty discovers it can also manage fear? That is the story of the New Leviathan. And it begins on a clear blue morning in September.

This episode serves as a bridge connecting our last series on the evolution of the General Welfare clause into the Administrative State and the New Leviathan where governance finds continued expansion via emergency power. We will reflect on how we got here and preview the arc from 9/11 thru COVID and look ahead to future choices.

In this final entry, we reflect on how this series has traced the transformation from Madison’s enumerated republic to Hamilton’s administrative state. From restraint to capacity. From structure to procedure. From limited government to what we have today.