Customer Reviews

American Empire Before the Fall

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Mr. Fein presents a well researched set of ideas and has provided yet another powerful tool for the liberty advocate.

As an avid Ron Paul supporter, I was pleased to see that Mr. Fein struck a chord on all the right notes, particularly foreign policy. This topic is of incredible relevance today with the "war" in Afghanistan. The book discusses how America lost its principles of a humble foreign policy to a neo-con's wet-dream of hundreds of military bases around the world in a perpetual state of war... a boon to the military-industrial complex.

Another pillar of Fein's work is the topic of economics and the free-market system versus centralized/government-run markets. He makes the case that America has spent itself into oblivion at the hands of both Democratic and Republican controlled administrations.

A wonderful read for true conservatives who respect the Constitution, limited government, a humble foreign policy, and fiscal responsibility. This book is a great wake-up call and slap in the face to every tax-and-spend liberal as well as war-mongering neo-cons, both of whom seem to be sprinting towards tyrannical government control.

Constitutional Scholar Bruce Fein takes a candid approach in this accurate, though sad, look at how far the American people have allowed their country to descend from a Republic self-governed to a near-dictatorship empire focused on expansion at any cost. Yes, it is upon the shoulders of the American people where he rests the lion's share of blame, for it is "We the People" who are granted phenomenal powers over government in the Charter Documents of the United States; it is we who have ultimately failed in remaining true to the legacy of the Founding Fathers in reining in corruption and adhering to the principles of the Constitution.

Fein leaves little room for bickering or finger-pointing as he slices into key moments of history (like the Mexican-American War) to illustrate as clearly as possible the shift the nation took from Republic to Empire. He does nothing to defend the defilers of the Constitution and picks out the worst culprits in our descent to Empire, their part in history laid bare -- such as John Adams' signing of the Alien and Sedition Act -- proving Madison and Jefferson right in their desire to restrain the Executive when even a Founding Father would abuse powers not granted him by the Constitution.

Fein unrepentingly targets the Executive, the Legislative, and Judicial branches, outlining their missteps with quotes from the wonderful Federalist Papers and from our Founding Fathers to set the tone for how the American Republic was meant to be, and through the darkness lights a candle of hope that we could one day reclaim the greatness America was meant for -- but only if we are willing to collectively take a stand and seize the powers granted to us by the Constitution over government.

Overall, American Empire delivers on its title and more; Fein takes us back to the Golden Age of America, a Republic where the individual was master of his own fate and neutrality was the watchword above all, and then leaves us with the America of today, her runaway government devoted to wars of intrigue and spying on her own people.

Can we return to a Constitutional form of government? Fein thinks so, but it will take a majority of the American people to wake up and see that our current course dooms us to bankruptcy and endless war before there is any real hope for a brighter future.

I lent some editorial assistance to Campaign for Liberty in producing this book, so I'm certainly biased. That said, American Empire: Before the Fall was not what I was expecting -- Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer, but this was no lawyerly book, at least not in the pejorative sense. To be sure, Fein constructs a carefully argued and copiously documented case that our foreign policy is very much at odds with the best traditions the Founding Fathers bequeathed to us. But this is also an intensely passionate book, a cry from the heart of a man whose country has been stolen from him.

Fein packs a lot into a text of under 200 pages. He shows how presidential power and the executive branch as a whole have expanded relentlessly since 9/11. He traces the roots of our corrupted foreign policy into the 19th century, and shows how the imperial urge grew stronger in the 20th. He also describes the prudent alternative contained in the nation's "Charter Documents" -- by which he means not only the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, but also key foreign-policy speeches of George Washington and John Quincy Adams. All along, he rebuts arguments asserting that empire was necessary or inevitable. Far from being essential to America's freedom and prosperity, our hyperintervetionist foreign policy undermines constitutional liberties at home and breeds enmity abroad.

The book is an excellent introduction to contemporary non-interventionist thinking. As such, it will be useful not only to libertarians and antiwar conservatives, but also to liberals and hawkish conservatives who want to understand this neglected tradition.

Great book on a very timely topic. Mr. Fein obviously did a tremendous amount of research to write this book and his writing style is superb. It is certainly thought provoking for those on the right and the left.

American Empire: Before the Fall has its positives and negatives, which I enumerate as follows.

Positives:
- Fein accurately portrays the current US government as a bigger, more oppressive, and a much more heavily-taxing leviathan than the British Empire from which so many gave their lives to separate.
- Fein rightly highlights US imperialism as rooted in the immaturity and insecurity of its leadership. The US patrols the world for the juvenile thrill of conquest and control (and to route tax dollars to military suppliers and banks).
- The Monroe Doctrine is correctly identified as an excuse for expansion.
- He notes that Obama is the financial, foreign policy, and civil liberties twin of George W. Bush.
- He raises a good point that no multinational effort at nation-building in the last 100 years has been successful (yet the arrogance of our leaders always makes them believe they will be the exception).
- He identifies multiple lies by presidents throughout the 20th and 21st centuries to trick the voters into supporting unnecessary war.
- He notes as pure fantasy the ideas that 1) we must fight for democracy, human rights, and stability globally as a matter of principal (Washington and Adams both opposed humanitarian wars) 2) a global military presence is necessary to ensure economic growth (historically, trade has increased when other nations engaged in war).

Negatives:
- There were multiple grammatical errors and typos.
- The author lauds Lincoln without calling into question the many sins of this American tyrant and enemy of the Constitution. Can you admire someone who shuts down over 100 newspapers critical of their administration and detains without trial over 10,000 Northerners as political prisoners? For an eye-opener listing many more dark secrets, read The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War. If we knew history, we'd have no Lincoln memorial...
- He praises Jefferson without mentioning his Constitutional violation in the Louisiana Purchase. The point being that even the most ardent defenders of the Constitution violated it once in Presidency (as did Adams with the Alien and Sedition Acts) - which is the whole reason that the Constitution is structured the way it is. For details (and a vastly superior book) on how each President overstepped his authority, check Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty (Independent Studies in Political Economy).
- He lumps most presidents of the 1800s together as uneducated clods, but John Tyler and Grover Cleveland were fairly good defenders of liberty, peace and prosperity.
- He kowtows to the Supreme Court with no mention of nullification - to understand that concept check out Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century by Tom Woods for good information on government run wild beyond its own rules.
- Fein totally ignores the perpetual genocidal wars against Native Americans throughout the nineteenth century - as if conquering those nations was somehow not imperialism.
- He continues the myth that the Soviets "blinked" in the Cuban missile crisis, when the opposite is true. The missiles were placed in opposition to US missiles in southern Italy and Turkey. *Kennedy* blinked and agreed to remove those.
- He claims that only Britain, Japan and Germany initiated war against the US; the list is actually smaller. The US placed an oil and steel embargo against Japan prior to WWII (a provoking move), and they supported ridiculous peace terms against Germany to end WWI, coupled with high protective tariffs in the 1930s that helped to cripple the German economy and thereby facilitate Hitler's rise to power. Lastly, the War of 1812 was caused in part by the US desire to establish a second national bank (predecessor of the FED which causes inflation) in competition with the Bank of England. The ruse was: start a war, act surprised it couldn't be funded, and then plead for a national bank to support more war - it worked - the Second National Bank came to fruition after the War of 1812. So, the US has caused, at least in part, every single war they have ever taken part in, which is not the fairy tale version of history you get in school...
- Fein, in tracing recent transgressions, skips suspiciously from Nixon to Clinton, ignoring Iran-Contra (and impeachable offense) and meddling in Lebanon under Reagan.
- Lastly, he supports a military draft - one of the greatest assaults on individual liberty. (Daniel Webster argued against its Constitutionality.)
- He also does not hold accountable any branch of the military for engaging in unConstitutional wars despite their oath to support the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. The minimally Constitutionally loyal response to a police action initiated by the Commander in Chief is to sit idly on ones behind. However, troops unwittingly give their lives in unConstitutional warfare, breaking their oaths, and taking direction from the very individuals they should be apprehending.

The book could be improved by addressing the above negatives and enhancing ongoing comparisons and contrasts between the US and other failed empires (Britain, Russia, Rome). I'm quite disappointed in this product of the Campaign for Liberty. Better would be an inventory of all unconstitutional federal programs, their histories, and a budget projection reflecting their removal.

Lastly, the production quality of the cover was dismal. I tore it off after both front and back curled up like a scroll.

With concise, accessible history, Bruce Fein illustrates American history from its unique and noble beginnings to its imperial and tragic current state. Going over the country's charter documents and quotes from the Founding Fathers, the author presents a basis for this American character arc and sets the tone for the struggles we face today. Fein quotes James Madison in the Federalist Papers saying that government must be given control over its people but then must constrain itself. For decades, it appeared that constraint had been established. But the author shows that a transformation occurred from the Mexican-American war through World War II in which this country went from an institution of liberty and peace to an empire. This empire has culminated in the Bush-Cheney-Obama triumvirate--an ugly group of leaders by any standard--which has consistently worked against liberty and the original intent of this country notwithstanding all the "hope" and "change" promised. The thesis is that the growing American empire is unconstitutional, illogical, and unsustainable, a point that is lost today on most of the supporters of said empire.

Fein finally offers a glimpse of real change in a revolution of liberty. It ends a tragedy with a silver lining, which will hopefully go a long way in bringing us back to liberty... or else.

JSBM, Author "Gods of Ruin: A Political Thriller"

Mr. Fein has much to say on Presidents past and present regarding the nation's fall from republic to empire, but he missed the biggest empire builder of them all. Indeed, he has nothing but praise for the man who put the final nail into the Great Experiment's coffin - Abraham Lincoln.

He quotes Lincoln's Gettysburg Address as a rallying cry for the republic, but that speech was beautiful poetry but utterly lacking in truth. It wasn't the forces of "the Union" that fought for liberty and a government of, for and by the People, but those of the Confederacy whose eleven states were attempting to leave the very empire of which Mr. Fein laments in order to reconstruct the original republic upon the Founding Principles. For all of the wars in which Presidents from Polk to Obama were involved, none killed as many as Lincoln's war. Of all the attacks upon guaranteed personal liberties of Americans by those Presidents, none were as many or as egregious as Lincoln's. From the suspension of habeas corpus (permitted by Congress alone) to declaring war on sovereign states (the only act declared as treason in the Constitution) to using the military to influence elections and rule over civilian populations (resulting in the Posse Comitatus Act), Lincoln stands alone as a true tyrant in American history.

Of course, this is blasphemy today because the "mythification" and canonization of Lincoln which began even as he breathed his last and is now complete. Thus, this low-brow, cynical, anti-religious but shrewd and sly Illinois lawyer-politician with an agenda that caused immeasurable death and suffering has been raised to the state of a demi-god and sits enthroned in his "memorial" in Washington, D.C. looking out on the city that he made into the home of a tyrannous authoritarian government with a huge standing army (the Grand Army of the Republic). In fact, it is not an accident that Lincoln's huge statue has the appearance of Zeus as found in the ancient temples of that King of the gods. Indeed, the "Lincoln Memorial" has been spoken of as a temple; it is. It is a tribute to the man whose actions finally destroyed the Republic of the Founders and set a sure foundation for the Empire that Mr. Fein so correctly decries. Too bad he missed that little point in his book.

The message of liberty and the rule of law in this book gives me hope that we will soon have a return to our historical Republic. We are reminded that we must temper our global ambitions and sheath our sword as a global defense force. At the expense of trillions of dollars a year we have become entangled abroad, thus stressing our international relations and endangering our very prosperity at home. Fully 2/3 rds of the population has lost faith in our government and now expects it to not make the decision that is in the best interest of our country - this leads, us as the closing chapters describe, to great hope that a movement will arise from this despair that will call for a leader who will renounce executive usurpations and secrecy, terminate our foreign military presence in hundreds of countries, revoke our legacy defense treaties from the last century, end our current military 'wars' abroad and push forward the rule of law for all mankind as the focus of what makes our country great. Only then will our great Republic be restored to the vision our founders had. This is a book worth reading again.

"If the truth is to unbelievable, it will be labeled a conspiracy" This Author breaks this rule and goes deep into the reasons behind where we are at this point in history. A great read and a thought provoking book.

Bruce Fein has performed a great service to his country. His book is a candid appraisal of the United States decades long meddlesome involvement in the affairs of sovereign nations around the world and the devastating consequences of those actions. This is a must read for those who favor limited government and a non interventionalist foreign policy. History does not need to be repeated. The United States can avoid the mistakes made by previous great nations. Mr. Fein's book lays out a sensible course of action to help navigate a country adrift in dangerous waters.