Russiagate, gun control, terrorism - a new deception for every day. But while Western populations are increasingly at each other's throats over political and social ideologies, a radically different moral and political system is developing in the world.

For centuries the West has enjoyed the fruits of global hegemony, and for the past 60 plus years America has enjoyed a dominant place within that system. Thus, the idea of a foreign culture gaining hegemonic power anywhere else is nearly unthinkable; for the elites it is a sacrilege, and for the average person it is simply unnerving.

But for China, the civilization with the longest continuous written history, regional hegemony is natural, and yet China struggles in an international system which leaves no room for national sovereignty - let alone regional hegemony.

China Rising

In his book Democratic Ideals and Reality, Sir Halford Mackinder wrote, "[T]here is in nature no such thing as equality of opportunity for the nations."¹ As an imperialist of the first order, Mackinder's perspective is clear - some nations are simply better placed than others and, if you want what they've got, you'd better make sure that you can take it from them. He continues,

Unless I wholly misread the facts of geography, I would go further, and say that the grouping of lands and seas, and of fertility and natural pathways, is such as to lend itself to the growth of empires, and in the end of a single world-empire.

This has been the Western attitude for centuries, and it is coming face-to-face with a geopolitical alien - the ancient Chinese and their dominion in Asia.

Over the course of the past century, China has experienced British, French and Japanese invasions, punctuated by rebellion and a Communist civil war. Now, thanks to cautious and independent planning, China can boast of having transformed a once agrarian society into an industrial nation that ranks higher than the EU and the US in terms of GDP. As one analyst noted back in 2010, "China was a top dog economically for thousands of years prior to the Ming Dynasty. In some ways, the past few hundred years have been an aberration."

Today China is the main manufacturer of many of the world's products, eclipsing the once-dominant US economy.² The average Chinese citizen has seen a rise in per capita income from $339 in 1990 to over $4,000 in 2010.³ Even after the 2008 recession, when forecasters believed that Chinese growth could not withstand a massive economic downturn, its own financial ingenuityproved otherwise. In other words, the world's most powerful 'Communist' government has created one of the most successful capitalist societies.

In 2012, when Martin Jacques published the second edition of his landmark book When China Rules the World, he was still able to question whether China would accept the international financial system as it was, under US dominance, or if it would pursue a fundamentally different system.⁴ With the memories of the 'Century of Humiliation' brewing in the Chinese collective psyche, the idea that China would pursue a policy quite different than the one pursued against them by Western powers would only have been an educated guess.

American policy-makers were convinced otherwise - that, by binding the US to China through its large trade deficit, China would remain compliant to the system and they would be able to contain China's aspirations for regional hegemony through inciting spats as needed. The South China Sea, arming Pakistan and inflaming incidents along the Chinese-India border, as well as maintaining a military presence on Japan, were all hoped to keep China contained.

However, history has given us the answer. China has been patiently and cautiously overcoming numerous barriers to regional hegemony and, with the implementation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the multi-billion dollar Belt and Road initiative, it is clear that a uni-polar system must undergo a fundamental change in order for China to realize her aspirations. And what are those aspirations? They are laid out quite clearly in the strategic aims set out by Xi Jinping: To have a "moderately well-off society" that is also "strong, democratic, civilized, harmonious, and modern socialist". While China's plans don't seem to envision it as a new global hegemon, the simple fact that she claims dominion over her own natural territory is enough to shake the foundations of the world order.

Challenge to American Financial Hegemony
After the 2008 banking collapse the internationalization of the yuan became of utmost importance to the Chinese leadership. It was clear to them, as it was to many others, that the dollar as world reserve currency, and the Fed as lender of last resort, was a recipe for disaster on a global scale. Though the Chinese economy survived, it was not without major dislocations. As Eichengreen,‎ Mehl,‎ and Chitu pointed out in their study of hegemony and global currencies, How Global Currencies Work: Past, Present, and Future,

[I]n a world where banks can fund themselves by borrowing not just dollars but also other currencies on the interbank market, their dependence on the Fed would be reduced. They might be able to obtain emergency swap lines from other central banks that were similarly issuers of currencies regarded as sufficiently safe and liquid to be widely traded on the international interbank market. As a result, the Fed would no longer be the only "global lender of last resort."⁵

As the authors point out, China thus set out on another difficult journey, from protecting her currency from speculation to releasing the currency onto turbulent and dangerous international markets. Never afraid of taking significant risks, the result was a massive assault on the yuan, yet another series of lessons of how the West plays the game.

In Xi Jinping's war on corruption, China further legitimized itself as a source for international capital. And, by breaking into the IMF's basket of reserve currencies, China has made the yuan that much more attractive to foreign nations. And they are beginning to see results.

European central banks have just recently begun to replace their dollar reserves with yuan, and the currency is making headway on the international SWIFT payment system. The US dollar still retains its supremacy, since countries are required to purchase their oil with US dollars. However, in June of 2015, Russia overtook Saudi Arabia to become the leading supplier of oil to China. As part of the deal, Russia agreed to accept yuan as payment for oil - part of a joint plan to begin phasing out the petro-dollar, something which many of China's trading partners have agreed to.

And, as China continues to become a more important business partner with Saudi Arabia - including the creation of a $20 billion shared investment fund - there is the potential for the latter to begin accepting the yuan as well. With China's assistance in Saudi Arabia's public offering of their primary oil company ARAMCO, there are rumors that Saudi acceptance of the yuan as a reserve currency is looking increasingly like only a matter of time. Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, said: "I believe that yuan pricing of oil is coming and as soon as the Saudis move to accept it - as the Chinese will compel them to do - then the rest of the oil market will move along with them."

Pepe Escobar reported in December of 2017:

The plan is to set up oil-futures trading in the yuan, which will be fully convertible into gold on the Shanghai and Hong Kong foreign exchange markets. [...]

Still, there are questions on how Beijing will technically set up a rival futures market in crude oil to Brent and WTI, and how China's capital controls will influence it. [...]

Of course, the prelude to D-Day will be when the House of Saud officially announces it accepts the yuan for at least part of its exports to China.

Two months later, and China has now set up that futures market, which will begin trading in March. Delayed by turmoil in China's stock markets, China is now poised to break into the world's petro-markets even as they begin to steal a share of the world's foreign reserves.

One would expect this situation to seriously upset the Atlanticists who have for decades been living off the free money that is the petrodollar. This lucrative arrangement has turned the Saudis into the financing arm of the US government, making it possible for the US to live perpetually on the dole while the rest of the world is forced to pump money into Saudi coffers and on into the US Treasury.

The Importance of the Petro-Dollar System

In 1973 OPEC initiated an international crisis by cutting oil exports to countries who supported Israel during the Yom-Kippur war. Of course, there were official reasons for the embargo, and then there are the real reasons.

The 'official' reason is the Saudis were outraged at the world's support for Israel. Judging from Saudi Arabia's own track record in human rights and her own shady deals with Israel, this is not a very convincing argument. What followed was an ingenious plan which would propel US to hegemonic status for the remainder of the 20th century.

After the 1973 embargo the US Treasury and the Saudis came to a critical agreement - the Saudis would accept US weapons and military support in return for linking their petroleum exports to dollars. The petrodollar was born.

After Nixon de-coupled the US dollar from gold, effectively ending the Bretton Woods system, US policy-makers were keen to introduce a new system which maintained US hegemony. As F. William Engdahl wrote in his book, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order:

In effect, through such secret arrangements as the U.S.-Saudi Joint Agreement with the Treasury and the activities of David Mulford, as well as OPEC's strange dollar-pricing mandate, Washington and the New York banks had exchanged their flawed postwar Bretton Woods gold exchange system for a new, highly unstable petroleum-based dollar exchange system, which, unlike the gold exchange system, they reckoned they could control. Kissinger and the financial establishment of London and New York had in effect replaced the old gold exchange standard of the postwar world with their own 'petrodollar standard.'⁶

Every nation in the world required the dollar in order to purchase oil, and in order to avoid devaluing the dollar (and their reserves) they were required to re-invest back in the US. The world became the US' lender. As Yuram Weiler wrote, "The result [was] a US-dominated global financial system dependent upon maintaining the value [...] of the dollar, allowing the US to enjoy an extravagant consumer-based economy at the expense of the rest of the world."

After the US abandoned the gold standard and adopted the petrodollar, any semblance of fiscal responsibility was out the window, and the US empire could go deep into debt to fund an ever-growing trade deficit, spending whatever it wanted, wherever it wanted, while neglecting core economic conditions like infrastructure, manufacturing, etc. The graph below reveals how drastically this petrodollar system impacted the US balance of trade:

After the 1970s, the balance of trade nosedived. Now it becomes apparent how big a threat the yuan plays on the world stage. As soon as countries begin to switch from the dollar to the yuan, they lose a major incentive to bankroll the US. A situation where the US spends $trillions on war while infrastructure crumbles, the UN has to send a special investigator to address the major discrepancies between rich and poor, and the ruling elite make fools of themselves, does not bode well for the US. No wonder then that analysts at a City of London think tank are warning of a 40 to 50 percent correction in the 2018 stock market due to a lack of demand for dollar-backed securities. Of course they've been warning this for years, but it's only a matter of time before the course correction comes.

The Path to American Energy 'Dominance'

Donald Trump's National Security Strategy highlighted the importance of energy dominance, stating "For the first time in generations, the United States will be an energy dominant nation." Scott Pruitt and co-authors describe in a Washington Times op-ed what 'energy dominance' means:"An energy-dominant America means a self-reliant and secure nation, free from the geopolitical turmoil of other nations that seek to use energy as an economic weapon."

However, it wasn't the Trump administration that lifted the 40 year ban on oil exports and got this ball rolling. That decision occurred under the Obama administration, and no doubt came from the 'Deep State' of major oil corporations, foreign policy advisers, financiers, and the Atlanticist elite who are seeking to adapt to a world in which they stand to lose considerable financial, political and military hegemony.

With the potential demise of the petro-dollar constituting an existential threat to America, the US ramps up oil production - and the Atlantic Elite go hog-wild with anticipation of a windfall. Amy Myers Jaffe, a spokesperson for the Council on Foreign Relations,remarked that, with the rise in US liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, "Russia will be the loser. We can already see their leverage on the gas market in Europe and the leverage they are trying to create over China dissipating."

Meghan L. O'Sullivan, former deputy national security adviser on Iraq and Afghanistan under George W. Bush, published a book in 2017 devoted to the concept entitled Windfall: How the New Energy Abundance Upends Global Politics and Strengthens America's Power. In her book she claims that this rise in exports "[W]ill, in fact, be a major determinant of the international order or, rather, how the world works." She continues:

It will alternatively hasten and help arrest the major trends now discernible to any global strategist: the corrosion of the rules and norms that have shaped the liberal international order since World War II, the shift of power and wealth from West to East, the push by Russia and China to establish spheres of influence, the rise of non state actors at the expense of sovereign governments, and the retrenchment of the United States and Europe from the global stage.⁷

And how exactly do they intend to do this? The US hopes to become the next Saudi Arabia of oil exports, and the reasoning is simple. As Nic Chao wrote for The McGill International Review, 'A strong domestic energy sector with a high priority of exporting will allow for a smooth transition away from the petrodollar regime.'

While the think tanks may hope for a 'smooth transition' it is nowhere evident that that's what they're going to get - and yet the fight for American Energy Dominance is going full steam.

In 2007 Rex Tillerson gave a speech to the CFR, in which he outlined the approach the US should take toward the world's energy market. He said that the US should abandon dreams of energy 'isolation' and instead, like the Council's founders, 'choose the course of greater international engagement'. With the yuan gradually displacing the US dollar in energy trade, and Russia increasingly displacing the US from the Middle East, it's no wonder that Condoleeza Rice nominated Rex Tillerson to the Trump administration as the man for the job of overseeing the US' new strategic role in an increasingly Eastern-dominated world.

In 2011 the US became the world's leading producer of natural gas. With the introduction of liquefied natural gas on the international market, and its use in various manufacturing and industrial capacities, the globe saw a new alternative to piped oil for their energy needs. In December of 2015, the US Congress voted to lift the 40-year ban on oil exports, thus paving the way for US oil to make its way onto the foreign markets. They just needed the facilities to export and markets that would import.

Throughout 2017, new pipelines were assembled which increased US capacity for international exports. In June 2017 Saudi Arabia and its Middle East allies cut all ties with Qatar, paving the way for the US to fill Qatar's shoes as gas exporter to the region. US energy companies dutifully followed suit.

In 2018, the US became a net exporter of natural gas for the first time in sixty years, with experts saying, "Never before has the global LNG market had such significant flexible LNG volumes as the volumes coming online in the next three years, mostly from the U.S., which will lead to a fundamental shift in how LNG is marketed and traded globally."

Pursuing energy contracts in Europe, in 2017 retired Marine Corps Gen. James L. Jones, a former national security adviser to the Obama administration, gave a speech to the Atlantic Council on how to 'cultivate' the Trump administration's interest in creating a new energy bloc within the European Union. This initiative, named the Three Seas Initiative, planned to unite the twelve EU nations in Central and Eastern Europe, creating an energy bloc that would drive Russia out of the EU market while bringing US energy in. It was a Washington-backed plan to cut Russia out of Europe's energy market completely, by turning Poland into a gas hub for US exports.

Jones claimed that Rex Tillerson had expressed his interest in the project, saying "He understands it. He understands the strategic interest; he understands the economic interest." He was further quoted as saying that, "This is a truly transatlantic project that has enormous geopolitical, geostrategic, and geo-economic ramifications."

As it stands now, Norway, Russia and OPEC are the big players in Europe's energy market. In 2012 Norway contributed around 31% of the EU's natural gas imports while Russia contributed around 39%, and OPEC accounted for about 40% of crude oil imports. The idea that Poland would out-compete Russia's cheaper and more efficient delivery methods, via pipeline, is a pipe dream (no pun intended).

But, it still means cutting into Russia's oil sales. By June of 2017 Poland was receiving its first LNG shipments. In August Lithuaniareceived theirs. However Germany was having none of it and approved a permit allowing Gazprom to begin construction of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

The US and Poland expressed 'extreme concern' over Germany's decision. Poland demanded the US impose sanctions on the project. Rex Tillersonstated that, "Like Poland, the United States opposes the Nord Stream 2 pipeline ... We see it as undermining Europe's overall energy security and stability and it provides Russia yet another tool to politicize energy as a political tool."

The German Foreign Ministry spokesman Rainer Breul was calm, cool and collected, saying, "I see no reasons for assessing it, I do not consider these statements surprising." Even the Atlantic Council was in agreement. Senior fellow Brenda Shafer stated that the Establishment needed to pick its battles, acknowledging that Nord Stream II was a lost battle. If ever there were an acknowledgment of the extreme predicament the 'liberal order' was in, that was it.

But Europe wasn't the only target of US energy exports. This year Cheniere, an American company specializing in liquefied natural gas (LNG), announced its first ever exports to a state-owned Chinese company. This is big news for an industry that boasts 10.3 million jobs and constitutes 8% of the American economy. And it also suits the Chinese economy, which made up 40% of the increase in demand for oil in 2004.⁵ Cheniere Energy also announced major long-term deals with China to import US natural gas into the 2040s, and other major corporations are looking to follow suit.

And, as usual, the West has Russia in their cross hairs. As Reuters reports, the sales to China are 'modest' but promises 'much more competition' for Russia to come.

How much more competition? US oil exports have recently hit a record high of 2 million barrels a day, and the US is forecasted to become a net energy exporter by 2022 - surpassing both Saudi Arabia and Russia. However, it is unclear how much longer they can maintain this production rate. Despite all the bombast from the industry and from Atlanticist think tanks, reports suggest it might not be much longer. A 2014 report suggested that much of the EIA estimates are flat-out wrong, and that many wells have only a fractionof the potential the industry claims they have. The EIA's job, one official claimed, was to 'tell the industry's story' - not the facts.

Regardless, it is apparent that China's shifting hegemony is making waves. So, while Atlanticists like Meghan L. O'Sullivan claim that American energy exports will end "The shift of power and wealth from West to East, the push by Russia and China to establish spheres of influence" it is clear they are, in reality, signs that the US must adapt to them, or else. Whether or not the US is able to survive a 'course correction' as it loses more and more hegemonic and coercive tools, will likely depend on its ability to learn to 'play well with others'.

Conclusion

With the rise of the petro-yuan, the US stands to lose quite a bit of coercive power. As Germany turns her back on US sanctions in order to receive Russian gas, China regains her regional hegemony, and the European Union threatens to come apart at the seems, it seems that the 'liberal international order,' as it's being called, is crumbling, and something very, very different is on the horizon.

The period that we Westerners have embarked upon may be as big a change as history has recorded - Russiagate, 'racism,' 'transphobia,' immigration madness, school shootings, rumors of conspiracy, war, and financial meltdown - hysteria, hysteria, hysteria. It seems, as the poet W.B. Yeats once wrote, that mere anarchy is loosed on the world.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

And yet, despite so many criminal intentions, history moves on, and we steel our nerves for every passing day. American Energy 'Dominance' or no, perhaps it's time the West let go of dreams of 'world empire' or even global hegemony, breathe a sigh of relief, and get our own house in order for chaotic times ahead.

References

1. Halford Mackinder's Democratic Ideals and Reality, p. 1.
2. Martin Jacques' When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order: Second Edition, p. 18.
3. Ibid., p. 184.
4. Ibid., p. 18.
5. Eichengreen,‎ Mehl,‎ and Chitu's How Global Currencies Work: Past, Present, and Future, p. 198.
6. F. William Engdahl's A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, p. 154.
7. Meghan L. O'Sullivan's Windfall: How the New Energy Abundance Upends Global Politics and Strengthens America's Power, p. 7.

Most people reading this will have heard of the US Military Industrial Complex (MIC), a state within the state that wages wars everywhere, has bases all over the planet, plunders poor nations and seizes their resources for the personal profit of an elite few. But if this definition is accurate, we would expect to have seen a dramatic increase in the US federal spending on defense over the course of the last 70 or 80 years, when the modern American MIC has been active. Is that the case?

A Grain of Truth

Decades ago defense was indeed the largest part of the federal budget. In the 1950s it represented about 2/3 of federal spending, which was 15% of US GDP.

This is a high proportion and was in line with a capitalist country at the time where state spending was restricted to two core priorities: defense and infrastructure, while all other sectors of activity were left to private initiatives. But things have changed a lot since then:
As shown in the graph above, over the past 60 years, the defense budget has shrunk from 15% of the GDP to less than 5%. As a result, the defense budget (in constant dollars) has been stagnating since the 1950s:
This stagnation is all the more striking in that the federal budget has dramatically increased over the same period of time:

The graph above shows that the US federal budget jumped from $500 billion in the 1950s to almost $3.5 trillion in 2010. In 2017, following two Obama administrations, it reached $4.2 trillion. That's more than an 800% increase.

One factor that enabled this dramatic increase in federal spending was the increase in GDP, which can be partly attributed to profits from wars waged by the US in numerous countries over the past six decades:

Those conflicts and their aftermaths generated huge profits not only for weapons manufacturers, but all companies involved in 'rebuilding' the target country - which usually involves US tax dollars being funneled to US corporations - and the appropriation of the target nation's most profitable resources.

This process is clearly explained in Naomi Klein's 'The Shock Doctrine'. But what is not explained in Klein's book is that thecompanies that dramatically increase their profits thanks to war, end up expanding, recruiting more employees and remunerating contractors and suppliers, and that all those economic agents will, in turn, end up paying more taxes that fund the federal budget.

Cui Bono?

If, as shown above, the US defense budget did not increase while the federal budget sharply increased, then where did all this extra federal money go? It appears that most of those funds, and here we're talking about trillions of dollars every year, went to the same place - the welfare state:

As depicted in the graph above, spending on the two traditional missions of the federal government - defense (red) and infrastructure (green) - have been dramatically shrinking. In the 1950s, it represented about 90% of federal spending while the welfare state (entitlement programs - blue) was virtually non-existent.

Today, the situation is reversed, with defense and infrastructure representing a mere 1/6 of total spending, while entitlement programs get the lion's share with 2/3 of the federal budget:
In terms of absolute numbers, the rise in social spending is even more staggering. It has reached almost $3 trillion, and now dwarfs defense spending by a factor of five. Notice also that it follows a hyperbolic trajectory that screams unsustainability:
Social programs already consume 2/3 of the federal budget and, at this frenetic pace, by 2030, they will consume all of it:

Despite the extra revenue generated by wars and increased taxation, federal spending (mostly composed of social programs) already exceeds total federal revenue (hence the massive US public debt):

As shown in the graph above, federal revenue is increasing steadily but spending is rising much faster. Since 2002, spending far exceeds revenue and thus contributes to an unsustainable level of public debt. Since 2012, US public debt is larger than US GDP and, not so coincidentally, it follows the same unsustainable hyperbolic trajectory as that of social program spending:

The Welfare State Funds The Implementation of Liberal Totalitarianism

The above shows that it is too simplistic to claim that wars waged by the US are exclusively designed to profit the Military Industrial Complex. While it's certainly true that agents from the military and industrial complex benefit from wars, it is clearly not the sole beneficiary, and not even the main beneficiary.

Rather, the main beneficiary of US wars is the welfare state. But war profits, no matter how frequent and large, aren't sufficient to fill the welfare black hole; on top of war profits, gigantic debt levels are also necessary to fund today's sky-high social programs.

From the above, one can reasonably conclude that one of the fundamental reasons for the US to wage wars around the world - and to embrace toxic levels of debt - is the funding of the welfare state. The next question is, where does this welfare money go?

The graph below shows that individuals with an annual income lower than $25,000 are the main beneficiaries of tax and transfer benefits:
And who are the individuals who make less than $25,000 a year? Is there a strong predictor like poverty, race, age, sex or geographic location? None of those criteria are as strong a predictor of poverty as marital status:
Single parent households are much more likely to be poor, and the number of single parent households has never been as high as it is today. The situation has reached the point where the normal family is not the norm anymore. A child born in 2018 has less than a 50% probability of growing up with both his or her biological parents:
Unwed childbearing has reached epidemic proportions in the US, with about 14 million single parents in 2011 raising more than 20 million children.

Statistics convincingly show that single parenting is not a good environment for children. It dramatically increases the probability that such children will engage in criminal behavior, take drugs, go to jail, drop out of school, suffer from depression, be obese and, of course, end up poor.
But 'poverty' in a socialist country like the US doesn't mean the same as poverty in a third world country. Today, a single parent with one or more children is eligible for more than 100 different social programs. On average, a single parent with two children will receive between $35,000 (in Illinois) and $49,000 (in Hawaii) in social benefits. The intervention of the US welfare state has reached such proportions that, in many cases, it's more profitable to be a non-working single parent than a working married parent. The welfare state encourages single parents not to work:

A 2013 Cato Institute study in which I participated found that total welfare benefits - counting not just TANF, but also food stamps, housing assistance, Medicaid, WIC, emergency food assistance, and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) - exceeded the minimum wage in 35 states. In the eight most generous states, those benefits could exceed what an individual would earn from a $20-an-hour job in 2013. While certainly not every poor family receives all those benefits, it is clear that the welfare system can still create a strong disincentive to work.

In exactly the same financial way, the welfare state encourages single parents not to re-marry:

Given the effectiveness of marriage in reducing poverty and other social problems, you would think that strengthening marriage would be a top priority for the welfare state. Wrong. The welfare system does the opposite.Welfare actively penalizes marriage by reducing benefits when low-income couples do marry.

For example, a single mother with two children who earns $15,000 per year will generally receive around $5,200 per year from the Food Stamp program. However, if she marries a father with the same earnings level, her food stamps would be cut to zero. A single mother receiving public housing benefits would receive a subsidy worth on average around $11,000 per year if she was not employed. But if she married a man earning $20,000 per year, these benefits would be cut nearly in half.

The federal government runs more than 80 welfare aid programs; nearly all of them provide very real financial incentives for couples to remain separate and unmarried.

- Robert Rector, How the Welfare State Penalizes Parents Who Marry

By lavishly supporting single parents and destroying the institution of marriage through 'no-fault divorce', the welfare state actively supports what has come to be known as the feminist/liberal agenda. The welfare state has de facto expelled and replaced men from the nucleus family. Today it is the state, not fathers, that educates children (day care, schools, counseling), today it is the state, not husbands, that financially supports the wife.

The intrusion of the state on the family nucleus is also deeply affecting the nature of the relationship between single mothers and their children. Single mothers are effectively 'married' to the state, which supports them financially, while their children have increasingly become a financial tool to maximize this financial support:

The replacement of the father by the government, which is the current trend in the West, will undermine maternal sentiments, alter the very nature of motherhood from an emotional tie into a form of waged employment with money as an intermediary between mother and her love; motherhood then is no longer a bond, but a paid employment. It is obvious that this process would lead to the destruction of the family.

- Baskerville, The New Politics of Sex

The Family Was The Last Bulwark Against Leftist Totalitarianism

It would be a grave mistake to think that the destruction of the family by the liberal ideology and its welfare state is a victory for single parents.

Everyone stands to lose from the destruction of the family: the expelled father finds himself a debt slave as a direct result of his divorce and the subsequent loss of his assets and the seizure of his income. The single mother is slave to the financial support of the state and the children are slaves to the education system of the state.

More importantly, the family nucleus was the very last stronghold of privacy and freedom in the face of the totalitarian liberal ideology. It was the last place where individuals could make personal choices, where the state could not interfere with personal decisions, where individuals were free to transmit to the next generation their culture, moral values and knowledge.

The rise in single parent households has shrunk the number of traditional families while new laws that regulate every aspect of a family's private life - including domestic violence, decisions on child-rearing, education, sexuality, religious beliefs, the food children are fed, and the use of alternative medicines - enable state interference in the life of the family.

Notice that we're touching here the very core definition of totalitarianism:

Totalitarianism is a political concept where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life.

- Conquest, Robert (1999). Reflections on a Ravaged Century

The liberal ideology has killed the family and now nothing stands in the way of totalitarian control of every citizen, even in his very home. But the destruction of the family is only one of numerous nefarious objectives pursued by the progressive ideology and those that espouse it. Of course, those objectives are carefully hidden behind a politically correct facade:

• multiculturalism: politically correct for the destruction of nations
• anti-racism: politically correct for the emergence of privileged minorities
• clericalism: politically correct for the destruction of religions
• sexual freedom: politically correct for the promotion of promiscuity
• equality: politically correct for the destruction of personal freedom
• modern art: politically correct for the destruction of beauty
• gender fluidity: politically correct for the destruction of identity
• postmodernism: politically correct for the destruction of truth
• fight against fake news: politically correct for censorship
• liberty: politically correct for the removal of responsibility

The promotion of these nihilistic policies occurs in every area of our modern society: in education, from kindergarten to postgraduate; in academia, with the politicized funding of orthodox topics and researchers; social workers who complement the education system in enforcing the ideology; minority groups lavishly funded and protected; the mainstream media that daily spreads liberal lies; law courts where cohorts of judges enforce ideologically-driven decisions; lobby groups that influence decision-makers; politicians that support laws serving the liberal agenda; experts and researchers that publish biased studies supporting liberal ideologies.

Notice that, today, the promotion of a totalitarian liberal agenda is not carried out by a clearly identified group led by a single public leader, as was the case with Lenin's Bolsheviks in Russia or with Hitler's Nazis in Germany.

Today, totalitarianism has manifested through a sort of ideological hydra, and only its heads are visible under the guise of many 'activist' groups, all of which define themselves as 'oppressed'. Despite their apparent diversity, all such 'activist' groups belong to the same ideological body: liberalism/progressivism.

The Hypocrisy of Liberalism:

Feminists and liberals despise the military because it is a male-dominated environment, one of the last places where healthy aggressiveness can, ideally, serve a positive or protective purpose. At the same time, these people seem to be fully aware of how appealing the military is from a social/political perspective:

1/ Finance: they need the military to fund their totalitarian plan.

2/ Social engineering: feminists and liberals have fully realized that the level of coercion in the military - where the soldier must obey orders even if they go against his conscience - makes it a perfect ground for indoctrination. In the military more than anywhere else, it is possible to apply extreme social engineering.

What happens to soldiers - and there are many - who disagree with women and homosexuals in combat units? Are they to be punished? Court-martialed? Do their religious and political views - that in other citizens would be protected by the First Amendment and other guarantees for freedom of expression - constitute disobedience to orders? If so, this means using the severe standards of military discipline to enforce a political ideology and punish doctrinal heterodoxy, even when it is nothing more than traditional beliefs and has no bearing on military effectiveness.

- Baskerville, The New Politics of Sex

3/ Domestic conflict: The furthering of the liberal/feminist plan is giving rise to a growing number of opponents who can see the absurdities, the contradictions and the destructiveness of their ideology. In recent years we have seen a growing number of violent confrontations between the enforcers of the liberal ideology (SJWs, Antifa, Black activists) and people who oppose it.

The military intervening directly to enforce ideological orthodoxy among citizens seems like a remote Orwellian nightmare. This drift is, however, already very real within the US military:

Military officials have begun targeting American citizens on American soil as "hate groups" because of their religious convictions. In military briefings, officials labeled groups of law-abiding citizens like the American Family Association (AFA) as hate groups because of their sexual morality.

"Why is the military training their personnel about domestic organizations, about what's going on here inside the United States? Isn't the purpose of the military to fight wars overseas?" asks Tim Wildmon of AFA.

"It's kind of troubling to think that the US Army is focusing on groups like the American Family Association." In effect, the military is taking sides in domestic political issues to the point of making religious convictions grounds for military intervention.

"It's spooky and in fact dangerous to see the US military even involved in policing pro-family groups on American soil," says Bryan Fisher of AFA. "Their job is to fight al-Qaeda, not their own citizens."

- Dave Bohon, 'Pentagon's True Take on Pro-family', The New American

Liberals and feminists are aware of this trend and have long realized that, in such a context, it is the one who has the guns that usually wins. This is one of the main reasons why, for years, feminists have focused on the military and aim to control it.

On the one hand, feminists and liberals point the finger at male aggression exemplified by the military - on the other, they use the military to further their toxic goals. And the hypocrisy doesn't stop there; consider the willingness with which feminists send men to die at the 'front' while condemning the slightest male sexually-suggestive word or look at women.

Feminist hypocrisy towards women is equally striking. At home, feminists (both the male and female varieties) treat women as fragile creatures who are the never-ending victims of sexual harassment and violence, but these are the same feminists who lobbied for the feminization of the army, which basically means using women as cannon fodder.

Conclusion

In order to reconcile two mutually exclusive values: wars and equality, leftists have been busy developing twisted narratives: war for 'freedom', war for democracy, war or equality, humanitarian war. It should be no surprise then to see that many feminists support wars against foreign nations in the name of stopping the 'oppression' of women in the very same foreign nation targeted by the neoliberal elite.

"We are not advocates for war, and conditions did not have to reach this dire point, but we believe thatwithdrawing troops means abandoning 15 million women and children to madmen who will sacrifice them to their lust for power."

- Esther Hyneman, board member of Women for Afghan Women

Ironically the wars fought by men overseas have ended up funding the welfare state at home which, in turn, funds a domestic war where the husband is the enemy.

The welfare state is in the process of removing the husband from the family thanks to a simulacra of justice: no-fault divorce, private courts, false accusations, biased judges, lower standards of evidence, no due process for defendants, and by broadening the definitions of rape, sexual harassment and domestic violence.

For centuries wars have been fought by men to provide resources for their household and local community or nation. There is nothing new under the Sun - it's just that today, when the soldier comes back from the front, he's not welcomed with banners, smiles and kisses. Rather, he's kicked out of his house, has to pay alimony for the rest of his life, another man is in his bed, and the state has taken ahold of his kids:

As one Army spouse writes to me, soldiers have been evicted from their homes, had vehicles repossessed and were forced to take out loans just to survive. One soldier in particular deployed to Iraq and, although he was divorced from his spouse and child support had been set and he was up to date with payments, she was able to successfully petition the court to increase support even though he had joint custody of their children and the Army allowed for him to maintain quarters for them. This increased his support to over $3,000 per month for two children, and when he returned from war he was forced to file for bankruptcy. But bankruptcy offers no protection against arrest.

- Baskerville, The New Politics of Sex

In sum, the Military Industrial Complex is a convenient scapegoat used by liberals and feminists to fund the American welfare state and its totalitarian drift.