Guardian of the Republic

by Allen West

  My life now has taken a new turn, yet my core values have not changed: service to God, country, and family. I have had many earthly masters who have been instrumental in developing me as an American ronin. Often, when I am traveling, complete strangers come up to me and thank me for being who I am. And who am I?

  Just a simple servant, a regular fella who, for whatever reason, finds himself in this incredible position. I’ve never been comfortable being in the limelight or on the grand stage, and I never wanted to come off like some cheap, fake actor.

  The underlying theme for me is to restore this republic. We must recommit to our fundamental principles and values. We must reclaim our American pride and exceptionalism. For that to happen, we must distance ourselves from a political class of elites and their accomplices in the media and entertainment industry who defile our culture and promote the degradation of honor and integrity.

  Armed with the code of Bushido, the American ronin who will serve the people must arise. Americans must find leaders who possess the qualities of our Founding Fathers, not these present shameful usurpers and impostors.

  Now is that time. The fakes, phonies, and frauds know it, which is why the courageous, competent, and committed true leaders for the next generation of America are viciously attacked and maligned.

  I am not the only person who lives according to the motto of that storied American unit, the Thirty-Fourth Armored Regiment: “Fear God, and dread not.” The code that brought me to this point in life is rooted in the words of God to Joshua in Deuteronomy 31:6: “Be strong and courageous for the Lord thy God shall never leave you nor forsake you.”

  It is that courage that our ancestors found to create this great nation and from which it has become an incredible land of opportunity in 237 short years. It is this nation, the greatest the world has ever known, that has provided me—and anyone who dares accept the challenge—with the chance to be more than they can be and to rise like a phoenix in her service. It is America that has instilled in me a burning desire to ensure that her greatest days lie ahead.

  There are those who say I am extreme, too combative, or too “in your face,” but it is the only way I know.

  Colonel Lewis commanded the Fifth Battalion, Eighth Field Artillery Regiment and fought to have the unit designated Air Assault. He then began the process of having the unit redesignated as the First Battalion (Air Assault), 377th Field Artillery Regiment, to reconnect the unit to its history as a glider artillery outfit in World War II and to its service at Normandy.

  After serving as his brigade operations officer for a year, Colonel Lewis assigned me to be the executive officer in the unit he had created, where our salute and challenge was “Be bold, Air Assault.” Since that day, the ultimate code of this warrior has been, and will forever be: “Be bold.”

  “Fortune favors the bold,” said Alexander the Great. So far, in my life, his words have been right on target.

  PART II

  CONSERVATIVE PRINCIPLES

  Chapter 4

  PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS

  And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

  —THOMAS JEFFERSON

  These are the closing words of the Declaration of Independence, the document that inaugurated the American experiment in freedom. The story of the founding of our nation—and the men who risked everything to bring it about—is an amazing one.

  Sadly, it is a story we seldom retell our children and grandchildren. As a result, when future generations make decisions for the future of this nation, they will be dangerously ill-informed. Lacking an understanding of the philosophical foundation of our republic, they may be more inclined to vote for its transformation into something our founders wouldn’t recognize.

  I started college thinking I would be an engineer just like my Uncle Jerome, who had graduated from Tennessee State University and worked for NASA. But I soon realized that although I enjoyed math, I didn’t have the mind for engineering. I was passionate about logic and reason, but I discovered that my true talent lay in analyzing theories of history and political institutions, not mathematical theorems. I changed my major to political science, and I was immediately enthralled. I eventually earned two master’s degrees: one from Kansas State University in political science and the second from the US Army Command and General Staff College in military arts and sciences. I developed my own philosophical foundation and acquired a deeper understanding of the political ideologies and theories that shape the world.

  As I pursued my philosophical development, I began to wonder who had inspired our Founding Fathers when they created our nation. What led them to write such monumental documents as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Federalist Papers?

  Now, I know some folks might find this subject a bit dry. After all, I spent a bit of time teaching history to high school students, and it was tough to get them fired up—and most adults today are worse, preferring the steady diet of easy-to-digest sound bites they’re fed by the media.

  But the way I see it, nothing is more stimulating than understanding the DNA of our exceptional nation. What motivated these men to risk their lives and fortunes for generations they would never know? We’re all beneficiaries of the legacy our founders left, so I think we owe them a little time to consider their roots.

  Rather than try to get inside the heads of Jefferson, Madison, Jay, and Hamilton, I’d like to share my understanding of their inspiration and the principles that led them to create these great United States of America. And if a simple fella from the inner city of Atlanta can understand this, then just about anyone else probably can, too.

  One of the fundamental premises that enabled our Founding Fathers to establish America was the theory of a “social contract,” the notion that the ruler and those over whom he ruled agreed upon their respective roles and obligations. Of course in history there have been many differing perspectives on those roles, but the underlying implication was that the ruler governed by the consent of the governed. This concept was firmly delineated in the Declaration of Independence: “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.…” Jefferson codified the social contract theory and sent a clear, brilliantly stated message that violation of the contract by any form of government would lose the consent of the governed, giving the governed the right to alter or abolish the relationship.

  The social contract theory was rooted in the concept of popular sovereignty, which claimed that the ultimate source of legitimacy and authority for the state is the people. A social contract combined with popular sovereignty resulted in the belief that the state—in other words, government—was and is created by the individuals within it.

  We must never forget that our country was established with preeminent regard for the individual—not the ruler, not the president, not the politburo, not a bunch of czars, but the individual.

  Balancing the rights of the individual against those of society has always been a struggle. It has also been a constant ideological tussle to define the relationship between the individual and the government. Three very different men shaped how we would regard that relationship in America: Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

  Fundamentally, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau shared the basic belief that people had once existed without government but had been governed by natural law in a predetermined state of nature. The three men concurred that people were basically equal under natural law and that political power derived from the individual. However, their respective definitions of “freedom” differed in important ways.

  For Hobbes, freedom was possible only when the individuals in society subjected themse
lves to the monarch. Locke believed freedom was greatest when the individual was left alone. Rousseau saw human freedom as attainable only with the creation of an ordered society in which equality was a dominant principle.

  In this regard Hobbes and Rousseau were closely aligned, because for them freedom was subordinate to a sovereign authority. Locke favored a more parliamentary republic in which government arbitrated disputes among citizens. He also advocated for private property but was against unlimited accumulation. Rousseau, because of his focus on universal equality, opposed unequal distribution of property because it resulted in unequal political influence.

  To understand how and why each of these gentlemen came to their respective points of view, it’s useful to review their historical contexts.

  From 1646 to 1648, Thomas Hobbes was a math tutor for the young Prince of Wales (later King Charles II), then exiled in Paris during the English Civil War. The war was between those backing an unpopular King Charles I (Charles II’s father) and the Parliamentarians, led by Oliver Cromwell (as I learned as a young boy by watching the movie Cromwell with Richard Harris in the title role). Amazingly, with the defeat of forces loyal to Charles I and his subsequent execution in 1649, power wasn’t transferred to his son and heir Charles II but to the people. For the next eleven years, England was ruled by Cromwell and the Parliamentarians. But after the death of Cromwell and the collapse of his regime, the newly formed Convention Parliament declared Charles II rightful king of England, and he triumphantly ascended the throne on his thirtieth birthday.

  It’s no surprise that Hobbes, after witnessing such turmoil, considered monarchy the best form of government. His view of the common man was certainly not pretty. He believed that in a state of nature where people were free to act as they wished with no law to govern them, they would lose all civility, if not humanity. In his book Leviathan, Hobbes used rather politically incorrect terms to describe the hopeless, chaotic, and “hideous, violent, brutish, nasty” state in which man existed. Hobbes felt we were all prisoners of our own avarice, although deep down we maintained a sense of rational thought. “Freedom,” though certainly not in the sense we think of it today, was possible only if people surrendered their liberty to a monarch. Being naturally wicked (not to mention hideous, violent, brutish, and nasty), the common man could only experience freedom when restrained and checked by a superior authority.

  Needless to say, Hobbes served Charles II, his young master, well. But his view would not be entirely accepted by our Constitutional Framers, though it was instrumental in their understanding of governing systems.

  Charles II had no legitimate heirs but fathered many children, of whom he acknowledged “only” fourteen. On his death his brother, James II, succeeded him to the throne.

  The reign of King James II was stormy. He took Hobbesian theory to heart and sought absolute power. As he increased his ties to the Roman Catholic Church, he used his power to suppress any rebellion from his former allies, the Protestant members of Parliament. His policies of religious intolerance finally came to a head when he was overthrown during the Glorious Revolution by the English Parliamentarians, with assistance from his own daughter’s husband, William of Orange. In 1688 James II fled to France, closing a long struggle between king and Parliament for dominance.

  Before the ascent of a new monarch, Parliament adopted a bill of rights designed to enforce strict limits on the English monarchy. The English Bill of Rights gave Parliament the right to hold free elections, meet frequently, legislate, and petition the king. In turn, the king was not allowed to suspend an act of Parliament and was forbidden to tax or to keep a standing army in peacetime without Parliament’s approval.

  Against this backdrop John Locke gained prominence. From exile in Holland, he returned to England escorting Mary, Princess of Orange, who later became queen beside William of Orange after the Glorious Revolution. As Hobbes sought to validate the restoration of the Stuart dynasty, Locke sought to promote the Glorious Revolution and its result.

  Today Locke is regarded as the preeminent classical liberal. Locke, too, was an advocate of “natural law,” but his interpretation of the term offered certain rights to the individual that could not be legally taken away or alienated without due process. Those rights were defined by Locke as life, liberty, and estate (property). Locke was most specific about the individual’s right to private property, which he believed was essential to each person’s well-being. That said, Locke did not embrace unchecked accumulation of property, and he favored a free market as being most conducive to individual freedom while preventing great disparities in property ownership.

  Locke’s fundamental premise was that private property was not created by society, and therefore society had no special claim or control over it. Private property was created by private individuals. I guess Locke believed “You did build that.”

  While Hobbes promoted freedom as being granted and possible only under government, Locke took a completely different approach. Locke maintained that people were most free when unhindered by government. Locke stated that freedom existed only in the absence of restraint, because, as rational people, we would of course behave decently when left alone. We could exercise our rights without the yoke of regulation as long as we chose not to interfere with the rights of others.

  Individual equality was another aspect of natural law. Locke recognized that all individuals differed widely in mental and physical capacity, but he asserted that regardless of these obvious differences, all individuals have the same natural rights. Locke also said that individuals were united by common interests, but that any government should function solely as an agent of the society, strictly limited to providing its vital function of serving the people. Finally, Locke was a proponent of majority rule, with a parliament elected by property owners. He called for separation of the executive (royal) and legislative (parliamentary) powers, with the legislature, as the direct agent of the people, having precedence over the executive. The legislature created the policy, while the executive carried it out.

  By the time of Locke’s death in 1704, the “Age of Enlightenment” had spread across Europe, challenging ideas grounded in tradition and faith and promoting scientific thought, the elimination of religious and monarchical authority from the education and legislative process, and the advancement of democracy.

  It was also the coming of age for an itinerant musician, music copyist, teacher, and composer named Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Born in Geneva in 1712, Rousseau had a challenging childhood. His mother died nine days after his birth. When Jean-Jacques was ten, his father abandoned him to avoid imprisonment for fighting in a duel, and the young Rousseau was raised by his mother’s relatives. Rousseau left home at age sixteen and spent many years wandering and having adventures. He traveled to Italy to study the Roman Catholic faith, then headed to France to the home (and bed) of an older woman, and eventually landed in Paris. He married his mistress, an illiterate servant who bore him five children, all of whom were abandoned at birth to the foundling hospital. It was not until 1749, when he was thirty-seven, that Rousseau made his mark, winning an essay contest sponsored by the Academy of Dijon with his essay, now known as his First Discourse, describing how society had corrupted human nature.

  Rousseau is often referred to as the founder of modern radical thought. Primarily, what separated Rousseau from Locke was his perspective on private property. Rousseau held that private property developed only after a community was formed, but it always promoted greed and selfishness. He believed people should form a new society to which they would surrender themselves completely. But in contrast to Hobbes’s assertion that a benevolent monarchy should lead, in Rousseau’s vision this new society would become a “public person” as a whole, directed by the “general will.” If created by the majority in the interest of the greater society, the general will could not be wrong. As a result, anyone who refused to comply with the general will, and by extension their own interests as determined by the new societ
y, would be forced to comply. According to Rousseau, when the community controls the state, it creates moral authority itself, thereby joining moral authority and state within a secular setting.

  The lesson to be gleaned from comparing Hobbes and Rousseau is that two similar ideas can result in two different extremes. Hobbes promoted subjugation of the people to a singular monarch, while Rousseau advocated subjugation of the people to a secular general will. But neither Hobbes nor Rousseau recognized the preeminence of the individual.

  A final and important piece of our governing structure came from two other gentlemen of the Age of Enlightenment. While less well known than Locke and Rousseau, James Harrington and Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu were still influential, and it was from Montesquieu that James Madison derived the theory of separation of powers, and of checks and balances. Both Harrington and Montesquieu were attracted to the idea of a democratic republic that limited the power of government over the people. This concept helped inspire Madison to create three branches of government, with respective duties, responsibilities, and powers not concentrated in any one branch.

  Madison went one step further and developed the theory of federalism to separate powers between the levels of government: federal and state. Madison sought to preclude any level of government from gaining too much power. And of course, inspired by the English Bill of Rights, the United States’ first ten Amendments to the Constitution codified the preeminence and specific rights of individuals as well as the rights and powers of the state.

  Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau had three very different governing philosophies, which are still being argued to this very day. What amazes me is that Locke, the father of classical liberalism, would almost certainly be viewed as a conservative today. I recall speaking to a political science class at Florida Atlantic University and expressing in my opening remarks that today’s modern conservatism is most closely aligned with classical liberalism, with its theories of individual sovereignty, limited government, and inalienable rights of life, liberty, and property. Well, the students went apoplectic, shouting their derision, until I turned to the professor and asked the simple question, “Am I correct, sir?” To the students’ dismay, the answer was yes.