Why has the United States’ government become so politically dysfunctional? How can it be that the nation—partially founded on John Locke’s principles of liberty and Montesquieu’s concept of separation of powers—today has such a corrupt and oligarchic federal government?

As the young political union that it was in 1781, based on the Articles of Confederation, the United States was unique. Unlike the nation-states of the Old Continent, it was based on the principle of limited government, natural rights of its citizens, and popular sovereignty.

Yet, today, the federal government in Washington, DC is pursuing a policy incompatible with these principles, not only towards Americans themselves, but also abroad.

Domestic politics in the US is, superficially, dominated by incessant public fights between different factions of the two ostensibly rival parties, thanks to the collaboration of establishment media and many social networks. Less obvious to the majority, the oligarchic and bipartisan character of the federal government consists in using the enormous political and financial means of the United States mainly to the benefit of a small minority. The majority gets the crumbs spread among a decaying infrastructure.

In terms of foreign policy, the US government can be considered “imperialist” since it tries to impose its will through legal, commercial, and military means, disregarding international law, if necessary. The idea of unipolarity—with the pole in Washington, DC—dates back to the end of the Cold War, but the hegemonic instincts go deeper. US territorial expansion was based on the concept of “Manifest Destiny” already in the early 19th century. The federal government showed, at that time, the same commercial ambitions of domination, as those expressed today in often self-defeating excess and with such dire consequences worldwide. Notably, the US federal government invented a pretext to attack Mexico (1846-1848), overthrew the independent kingdom of Hawaii (1893), declared war on Spain on another pretext (1898), and whipped the Filipinos submission into (1899-1902).

Clearly, Washington, DC pursues a domestic and foreign policy that goes against the founding principles of the United States. This has been possible due to the progressive subjugation of the States to a federal government with messianic ambitions of hegemony.

The two critical moments happened—during the drafting of the Constitution, and later, during the Civil War.

The Constitution Became Federalist

The years following the creation of the United States are important to understand the ascendancy of its federal government, today alarmingly unbridled and unchecked. It is necessary to recall first the great debate that took place between Federalists and Anti-Federalists around the new Constitution. This debate clearly showed that, among the Founding Fathers, there were already some who were alarmed by the power that the new Constitution would confer on the new federal government at the expense of the states and the people of the United States.

Indeed, the Anti-federalists—among them also Thomas Jefferson—were opposed to a ratification of the Constitution (1787) to replace the Articles of Confederation (1781), as they thought the latter better guaranteed the rights of the independent states in the Union.

Thus, some Anti-Federalists opposed the Constitution because they thought that a constitutionally strong federal government would threaten the rights of the states. Other Anti-Federalists argued that a new centralized government would take on all the characteristics of the despotism of Great Britain, from which they had just recently seceded. And still others feared that the new government would threaten their individual liberties. They were all right in their premonitions.

The Anti-Federalists’ insistence nevertheless allowed the Bill of Rights to be adopted in 1791, spelling out Americans’ rights in relation to their government. They also persisted in seeing the states as being bound by the Compact Theory (the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 and 1799), thus confirming the legal and political supremacy of the states over the federal government. This would give, among other things, the right to each state to nullify (i.e. invalidate) any federal law that it considered to be unconstitutional.

But it would soon become apparent that these initiatives were not enough to protect the liberties of the states, and the citizens of those states, from the encroachment of the federal government. It soon became apparent that foreign nations were not protected either. It should be remembered, though, that the Constitution does not explicitly authorize the federal government to bring new lands into the Republic, either through war or through trade (the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803 was controversial for this reason).

The Constitution, in theory, limits the areas of responsibility of the federal government. But the lack of detail and, therefore, the freedom of interpretation of this document have contributed to giving the federal government, over time, a power that is unconstitutional. This is precisely the two-centuries-long confrontation between two radically different interpretations: the “living constitution” and “originalism.” The former view is largely responsible for the following federal laws: military conscription, “Jim Crow” laws, the income tax, the Federal Reserve, Roe v. Wade, the Social Security Act, anti-drug laws, the Patriot Act, etc.

Furthermore, representative democracy was not constitutionally provided for the executive and legislative branches in Washington, DC, as it was at the local level. As long as the federal government was small and weak—a political subject to the states—as was the intention of the Founding Fathers (at least the Anti-Federalists), this lack of democracy at the federal level mattered little.

The Civil War Sealed the Fate of the States

The power of the states was further eroded by the Civil War (though more properly called the “War Between the States”). If the states of the Union were sovereign and independent—as the Articles of Confederation had made clear—why were they not also permitted to leave the Union? Indeed, no article in the Constitution restricts a state’s right to secede.

This point became crucial during the Civil War, which was primarily an economic conflict between the Northern and Confederate States. It was through this war that President Abraham Lincoln consciously decided to seal the fate of the United States as a federal republic, and to definitively take the road that the Anti-Federalists had so feared.

Lincoln’s letters show that he knew full well that, when he unconstitutionally ordered the federal government to militarily prevent the secession of the Confederate States, he was choosing to save the political United States of 1861 by going against its Constitution. Thomas DiLorenzo has thus showed that the Civil War was the moment when the modern state also arrived to America: the federal government then took definitive political ascendancy over the states, and the constitutional limits on its power were irremediably weakened.

Indeed, after the Civil War, the federal government began to intervene more heavily in the US economy as well as militarily abroad for both commercial as well as expansionist reasons. The power relationship had been reversed from the original intent of the Anti-Federalists when the Constitution was signed. Today, this is also reflected in the fact that the states are heavily dependent on federal transfers; it now represents about a third of the states’ budgets.

Lincoln’s responsibility for the political dystopia that the United States has become today was, therefore, decisive. But the federal government naturally sees his role in a very positive light, as shown by the never-ending veneration of Abraham Lincoln for a century and a half.

It is instructive to compare the US with Europe in this regard. As European states moved from absolutism to parliamentarism and universal suffrage, both of which can act at times like a conduit for public opinion, such a conduit is far weaker in the US since the federal government is once removed from the people and yet no longer de facto subjected to the states.

For libertarians—and especially those who know some European history—the conclusion is obvious: no document, however “sacred,” can be a definitive protection against the will to power of the state and against its violations of individual freedom. It is, therefore, not enough to demand a strict constitutional framework of the “originalist” type in the United States, but to fight by all means for a reduction of the power of the state. This is what defines the political action of the libertarian, not only in the United States, but everywhere a central government has gained the upper hand over society.