Thomas Jefferson said, "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground," and that has been borne out by history with the few bright exceptions in which a society demanded the freedom to live as they ought. The founding of the United States of America was one of those bright moments. Often described as an experiment, it was one of the most improbable series of events in history in which a people threw off the shackles of their government and sought out to see if they could rule themselves.

As we saw, the experiment was difficult to replicate. France immediately tried to do it and ended up burning their country down in a reign of terror. Russia tried it and not only killed off 30 million of her own people but nearly brought the world to nuclear oblivion. As we have seen with the “democracy-building” projects in the Middle East, it’s not as easy as it may seem.

Furthermore, in a dark turn for social science, the American experiment itself appears to have ended in utter failure as well.

It was forewarned by the Founding Fathers. Jefferson said that, “even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” And after the Framers had hammered out the U.S. Constitution in Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin told an inquiring woman that the congress had produced, "A republic, madam, if you can keep it."

Following a series of shocking revelations in 2022, it is clear that we have decidedly not kept it. The Founders established a government that Lincoln later described as “Of the people, by the people, and for the people.” We don’t have that. There is very little representation by our representatives and we have an executive branch that is actively against the people.

Taxation without Representation

In 2018, Joe Biden bragged about a quid-pro-quo deal in 2014 in which he threatened to pull aid from Ukraine if a certain anti-corruption prosecutor wasn’t fired. At the time, the prosecutor was investigating the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, which was paying upwards of $50,000 a month to Biden’s crack-addict son, Hunter, who had no previous experience in the energy sector.

Fast forward to December, 2022, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky unfurled a Ukrainian flag in a joint session of Congress and Vice President Kamala Harris and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi raised it up, obscuring the American flag behind it. Shortly after that, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said, “Providing assistance for Ukrainians to defeat the Russians is the number one priority for the United States right now according to most Republicans.”

At a time when the United States is heading into a recession with decades-high inflation and crippling debt, a lame-duck Congress with a near record low approval rating decided to put the country $46 billion further in debt to prop up the Ukrainian money laundromat government and threaten a hot war with nuclear superpower Russia.

But, while sending billions to one of the most corrupt countries in Europe may be the “number one priority,” according to Mitch McConnell, it’s certainly not the only priority for Congress. The 4,155-page pork-laden $1.7 trillion omnibus bill, which passed before any member of Congress had time to read it, also set aside $410 million for “for enhanced border security” in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Oman.

According to a Pew poll leading up to the midterm elections, Americans don’t prioritize the border security of Ukraine or Jordan. They do care about the U.S. border, however, as immigration is one of their highest priorities. But not only did Congress reject an amendment of the omnibus bill to keep Title 42 in place to continue some measure of U.S. border protection, they expressly prohibited increased border funding from being used to secure the border and instead incentivized illegal immigration.

Borders are sacred and we must defend them! But not our border, evidently.

The most important issue to Americans in general is the economy. But Congress added $750,000 to the national debt to fund Gender Non-Conforming Housing in New York, $1 million for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Ohio, and $3.6 million for a Michelle Obama Trail in Georgia.

As part of his annual Festivus airing of grievances, Senator Rand Paul reported $482,276,543,907 of government waste including:

• Maintaining 77,000 empty Federal buildings ($1,700,000,000)
• Helping illegal immigrants avoid deportation ($168,000,000)
• Overpaying government contractors for a terminated contract ($69,000,000)
• Using COVID relief funds to construct an 11,000 square foot spa ($140,000,000)
• Watching hamsters fight on steroids ($3,000,000)
• Studying the romance between parrots ($689,222)
• A radio campaign telling drivers to stop at railroad crossings ($200,000)

I don’t know about you, but if I were struggling to put food on my table for my family, I wouldn’t go into debt to watch hamsters on steroids fight

The Department of Just Us

The second most important issue to Americans according to the Pew poll is “the future of democracy in the country” and with what we’re seeing from the federal government, it’s no wonder.

Over several bombshell reports, the Twitter Files exposed what most people already knew: the Deep State is real and is violating the Constitution by restricting free speech and influencing elections.

We learned that the FBI sat on Hunter Biden’s laptop from Hell, complete with evidence of the aforementioned influence peddling and corruption, for over a year, “yet, during all of 2020, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies repeatedly primed [Twitter Censor] Yoel Roth to dismiss reports of Hunter Biden’s laptop as a Russian “hack and leak” operation.”

It turns out that the FBI used the 2016 Russia-Trump collusion story, which itself has been shown to be an intelligence community hoax, to propagate the lie that the Hunter laptop story was Russian disinformation.

And that disinformation alone affected the 2020 election -- perhaps more than any other factor. A poll by TIPP Insights showed that nearly three-fourths of Democratic voters would have “very likely” or “somewhat likely” changed their vote had they known the laptop was real.

What’s worse is that the very people tasked with protecting us from constitutional violations are the ones committing the crimes. We have no representation in our representative government. There is no justice in the justice system. This is not the country I grew up in and it certainly isn’t the country the Founding Fathers envisioned. It’s time we come to grips with the fact that the American experiment has failed.

JSB Morse is a husband, father, entrepreneur, writer of several books including “Gods of Ruin” and “Paleo Family”, artist, and lover of mangoes. He can be found at jsbmorse.com

Image: Junius Brutus Steams